《War And Peace》 Book1 CHAPTER VIII
by Leo Tolstoy
A SILENCE followed. The countess looked at her guest, smiling affably, but still not
disguising the fact that she would not take it at all amiss now if the guest were to get
up and go. The daughter was already fingering at the folds of her gown and looking
interrogatively at her mother, when suddenly they heard in the next room several girls and
boys running to the door, and the grating sound of a chair knocked over and a girl of
thirteen ran in, hiding something in her short muslin petticoat, and stopped short in the
middle of the room. She had evidently bounded so far by mistake, unable to stop in her
flight. At the same instant there appeared in the doorway a student with a crimson band on
his collar, a young officer in the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a fat, rosy-cheeked boy
in a child's smock.
The prince jumped up, and swaying from side to side, held his arms out wide round the
little girl.
“Ah, here she is!” he cried, laughing. “Our little darling on her fête day!”
“My dear, there is a time for everything,” said the countess, affecting severity.
“You're always spoiling her, Elie,” she added to her husband.
“Bonjour, ma chère, je vous félicite,” said the visitor. “Quelle
délicieuse enfant!” she added, turning to her mother.
The dark-eyed little girl, plain, but full of life, with her wide mouth, her childish
bare shoulders, which shrugged and panted in her bodice from her rapid motion, her black
hair brushed back, her slender bare arms and little legs in lace-edged long drawers and
open slippers, was at that charming stage when the girl is no longer a child, while the
child is not yet a young girl. Wriggling away from her father, she ran up to her mother,
and taking no notice whatever of her severe remarks, she hid her flushed face in her
mother's lace kerchief and broke into laughter. As she laughed she uttered some
incoherent phrases about the doll, which was poking out from her petticoat.
“Do you see?…My doll…Mimi…you see…” And Natasha could say no more, it all
seemed to her so funny. She sank on her mother's lap, and went off into such a loud peal
of laughter that every one, even the prim visitor, could not help laughing too.
“Come, run along, run along with your monstrosity!” said her mother, pushing her
daughter off with a pretence of anger. “This is my younger girl,” she said to the
visitor. Natasha, pulling her face away from her mother's lace kerchief for a minute,
peeped down at her through tears of laughter, and hid her face again.
The visitor, forced to admire this domestic scene, thought it suitable to take some
part in it.
“Tell me, my dear,” she said, addressing Natasha, “how did you come by your Mimi?
Your daughter, I suppose?”
Natasha did not like the tone of condescension to childish things with which the
visitor had spoken to her. She made no answer, but stared solemnly at her.
Meanwhile all the younger generation, Boris, the officer, Anna Milhalovna's son;
Nikolay, the student, the count's elder son; Sonya, the count's niece; and little
Petya, his younger son, had all placed themselves about the drawing-room, and were
obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and mirth which
was brimming over in their faces. Clearly in the back part of the house, from which they
had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had been more amusing than the small-talk
in the drawing-room of the scandal of the town, the weather, and Countess Apraxin. Now and
then they glanced at one another and could hardly suppress their laughter.
The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from childhood, were of the
same age, and both good-looking, but not like each other. Boris was a tall, fair-haired
lad with delicate, regular features, and a look of composure on his handsome face. Nikolay
was a curly-headed youth, not tall, with an open expression. On his upper lip there were
already signs of a black moustache coming, and his whole face expressed impulsiveness and
enthusiasm. Nikolay flushed red as he came into the drawing-room. He was unmistakably
trying to find something to say, and unable to find anything. Boris, on the contrary, was
at home immediately and talked easily and playfully of the doll Mimi, saying that he had
known her as a young girl before her nose was broken, and she had grown older during the
five years he remembered her, and how her head was cracked right across the skull. As he
said this he looked at Natasha. Natasha turned away from him, glanced at her younger
brother, who, with a scowl on his face, was shaking with noiseless laughter, and unable to
restrain herself, she skipped up and flew out of the room as quickly as her swift little
legs could carry her. Boris did not laugh.
“You were meaning to go out, mamma, weren't you? Do you want the carriage?” he
said, addressing his mother with a smile.
“Yes, go along and tell them to get it ready,” she said, smiling. Boris walked
slowly to the door and went after Natasha. The stout boy ran wrathfully after them, as
though resenting the interruption of his pursuits.
