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Updated: June 23, 2025
Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else."
After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes the Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious nobility, Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the attention that was being paid to her, read the last words: "We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that Capital and in other parts of our realm for consultation, and for the direction of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy's path and those freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear.
Marya Dmitrievna shook her fat finger. "Cossack!" she said threateningly. Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the elders. "You had better take care!" said the countess. "Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in good part. Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.
The girls believed that they could not have made it, except that now and then they stopped for a day or more to rest. On these days Barbara and Nona used to spend at least a few hours in sightseeing, no matter what their fatigue. Now and then Mildred would go with them, but never Sonya. Occasionally Nona would urge her, saying that the exercise and change of atmosphere would be good for her.
On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on Wednesday the count went with the prospective purchaser to his estate near Moscow. On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there.
Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and playful in them, but to dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little frightening. "How she prayed!" he thought. "It was plain that her whole soul was in her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains, and I am sure her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I want?" he suddenly thought. "What do I want?
"'Yes, of course, said Kisotchka with a sigh, 'but you know every girl fancies that any husband is better than nothing. . . . Altogether life is horrid here, Nikolay Anastasyevitch, very horrid! Life is stifling for a girl and stifling when one is married. . . . Here they laugh at Sonya for having run away from her husband, but if they could see into her soul they would not laugh. . . ."
She was beginning to guess that the old peasant couple, who at first had seemed mysterious companions for the beautiful Russian woman, were probably old servants. If Sonya was a follower of Tolstoi as her mother had been, she must have refused to recognize any difference between them. But this was not their feeling.
But here was none of all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not know his right place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya with whom he ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was no possibility of going there or not going there; here there were not twenty-four hours in the day which could be spent in such a variety of ways; there was not that innumerable crowd of people of whom not one was nearer to him or farther from him than another; there were none of those uncertain and undefined money relations with his father, and nothing to recall that terrible loss to Dolokhov.
They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to what would happen if she heard this news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked. "Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us," said Sonya. "You say he is dying?" Sonya nodded. The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to cry.
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