FOR A LONG WHILE Pierre could not sleep that night. He walked up and down his room, at one moment frowning deep in some difficult train of thought, at the next shrugging his shoulders and shaking himself and at the next smiling blissfully.
He thought of Prince Andrey, of Natasha, of their love, and at one moment was jealous of her past, and at the next reproached himself, and then forgave himself for the feeling. It was six o’clock in the morning, and still he paced the room.
“Well, what is one to do, if there’s no escaping it？ What is one to do？ It must be the right thing, then,” he said to himself; and hurriedly undressing, he got into bed, happy and agitated, but free from doubt and hesitation.
“However strange, however impossible such happiness, I must do everything that we may be man and wife,” he said to himself.
Several days previously Pierre had fixed on the following Friday as the date on which he would set off to Petersburg. When he waked up next day it was Thursday, and Savelitch came to him for orders about packing the things for the journey.
“To Petersburg？ What is Petersburg？ Who is in Petersburg？” he unconsciously asked, though only of himself. “Yes, some long while ago, before this happened, I was meaning for some reason to go to Petersburg,” he recalled. “Why was it？ And I shall go, perhaps. How kind he is, and how attentive, how he remembers everything！” he thought, looking at Savelitch’s old face. “And what a pleasant smile！” he thought.
“Well, and do you still not want your freedom, Savelitch？” asked Pierre.
“What should I want my freedom for, your excellency？ With the late count—the Kingdom of Heaven to him—we got on very well, and under you, we have never known any unkindness.”
“Well, but your children？”
“My children too will do very well, your excellency; under such masters one can get on all right.”
“Well, but my heirs？” said Pierre. “All of a sudden I shall get married … It might happen, you know,” he added, with an involuntary smile.
“And I make bold to say, a good thing too, your excellency.”
“How easy he thinks it,” thought Pierre. “He does not know how terrible it is, how perilous. Too late or too early … It is terrible！”
“What are your orders？ Will you be pleased to go to-morrow？” asked Savelitch.
“No; I will put it off a little. I will tell you later. You must excuse the trouble I give you,” said Pierre, and watching Savelitch’s smile, he thought how strange it was, though, that he should not know there was no such thing as Petersburg, and that that must be settled before everything.
“He really does know, though,” he thought; “he is only pretending. Shall I tell him？ What does he think about it？ No, another time.”
At breakfast, Pierre told his cousin that he had been the previous evening at Princess Marya’s, and had found there—could she fancy whom—Natasha Rostov.
The princess looked as though she saw nothing more extraordinary in that fact than if Pierre had seen some Anna Semyonovna.
“You know her？” asked Pierre.
“I have seen the princess,” she answered, “and I had heard they were making a match between her and young Rostov. That would be a very fine thing for the Rostovs; I am told they are utterly ruined.”
“No, I meant, do you know Natasha Rostov？”
“I heard at the time all about that story. Very sad.”
“She does not understand, or she is pretending,” thought Pierre. “Better not tell her either.”
The princess, too, had prepared provisions for Pierre’s journey.
“How kind they all are,” thought Pierre, “to trouble about all this now, when it certainly can be of no interest to them. And all for my sake; that is what’s so marvellous.”
The same day a police officer came to see Pierre, with an offer to send a trusty agent to the Polygonal Palace to receive the things that were to-day to be restored among the owners.
“And this man too,” thought Pierre, looking into the police officer’s face, “what a nice, good-looking officer, and how good-natured！ To trouble about such trifles now. And yet they say he is not honest, and takes bribes. What nonsense！ though after all why shouldn’t he take bribes？ He has been brought up in that way. They all do it. But such a pleasant, good-humoured face, and he smiles when he looks at me.”
Pierre went to Princess Marya’s to dinner. As he drove through the streets between the charred wrecks of houses, he admired the beauty of those ruins. The chimneys of stoves, and the tumbledown walls of houses stretched in long rows, hiding one another, all through the burnt quarters of the town, and recalled to him the picturesque ruins of the Rhine and of the Colosseum. The sledge-drivers and men on horseback, the carpenters at work on the frames of the houses, the hawkers and shopkeepers all looked at Pierre with cheerful, beaming faces, and seemed to him to say： “Oh, here he is！ We shall see what comes of it.”
On reaching Princess Marya’s house, Pierre was beset by a sudden doubt whether it were true that he had been there the day before, and had really seen Natasha and talked to her. “Perhaps it was all my own invention, perhaps I shall go in and see no one.” But no sooner had he entered the room than in his whole being, from his instantaneous loss of freedom, he was aware of her presence. She was wearing the same black dress, that hung in soft folds, and had her hair arranged in the same way, but she was utterly different. Had she looked like this when he came in yesterday, he could not have failed to recognise her.
