War and Peace

party with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.
Before long Boris, Berg’s old comrade, arrived. There 
was a shade of condescension and patronage in his treat-
ment of Berg and Vera. After Boris came a lady with the 
colonel, then the general himself, then the Rostovs, and the 
party became unquestionably exactly like all other evening 
parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of sat-
isfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing 
room, at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of 
dresses, and the bowing and scraping. Everything was just 
as everybody always has it, especially so the general, who 
admired the apartment, patted Berg on the shoulder, and 
with parental authority superintended the setting out of the 
table for boston. The general sat down by Count Ilya Ros-
tov, who was next to himself the most important guest. The 
old people sat with the old, the young with the young, and 
the hostess at the tea table, on which stood exactly the same 
kind of cakes in a silver cake basket as the Panins had at 
their party. Everything was just as it was everywhere else.

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Chapter XXI
Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to 
boston with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At 
the card table he happened to be directly facing Natasha, 
and was struck by a curious change that had come over her 
since the ball, She was silent, and not only less pretty than 
at the ball, but only redeemed from plainness by her look of 
gentle indifference to everything around.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ thought Pierre, glancing 
at her. She was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and re-
luctantly, without looking at him, made some reply to Boris 
who sat down beside her. After playing out a whole suit 
and to his partner’s delight taking five tricks, Pierre, hear-
ing greetings and the steps of someone who had entered the 
room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again at 
Natasha.
‘What has happened to her?’ he asked himself with still 
greater surprise.
Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying some-
thing to her with a look of tender solicitude. She, having 
raised her head, was looking up at him, flushed and evi-
dently trying to master her rapid breathing. And the bright 
glow of some inner fire that had been suppressed was again 
alight in her. She was completely transformed and from a 
plain girl had again become what she had been at the ball.

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Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a 
new and youthful expression in his friend’s face.
Pierre changed places several times during the game, sit-
ting now with his back to Natasha and now facing her, but 
during the whole of the six rubbers he watched her and his 
friend.
‘Something very important is happening between them,’ 
thought Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and pain-
ful agitated him and made him neglect the game.
After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no 
use playing like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on 
one side was talking with Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a 
subtle smile was saying something to Prince Andrew. Pierre 
went up to his friend and, asking whether they were talking 
secrets, sat down beside them. Vera, having noticed Prince 
Andrew’s attentions to Natasha, decided that at a party, a 
real evening party, subtle allusions to the tender passion 
were absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when 
Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation with him 
about feelings in general and about her sister. With so intel-
lectual a guest as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she 
felt that she had to employ her diplomatic tact.
When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was 
being carried away by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince 
Andrew seemed embarrassed, a thing that rarely happened 
with him.
‘What do you think?’ Vera was saying with an arch 
smile. ‘You are so discerning, Prince, and understand peo-
ple’s characters so well at a glance. What do you think of 

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Natalie? Could she be constant in her attachments? Could 
she, like other women’ (Vera meant herself), ‘love a man 
once for all and remain true to him forever? That is what I 
consider true love. What do you think, Prince?’
‘I know your sister too little,’ replied Prince Andrew, 
with a sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his 
embarrassment, ‘to be able to solve so delicate a question, 
and then I have noticed that the less attractive a woman is 
the more constant she is likely to be,’ he added, and looked 
up Pierre who was just approaching them.
‘Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days,’ continued Vera-
mentioning ‘our days’ as people of limited intelligence are 
fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and 
appraised the peculiarities of ‘our days’ and that human 
characteristics change with the times‘in our days a girl has 
so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted often 
stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that Nat-
alie is very susceptible.’ This return to the subject of Natalie 
caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: 
he was about to rise, but Vera continued with a still more 
subtle smile:
‘I think no one has been more courted than she,’ she went 
on, ‘but till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. 
Now you know, Count,’ she said to Pierre, ‘even our dear 
cousin Boris, who, between ourselves, was very far gone in 
the land of tenderness...’ (alluding to a map of love much in 
vogue at that time).
Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.
‘You are friendly with Boris, aren’t you?’ asked Vera.

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‘Yes, I know him..’
‘I expect he has told you of his childish love for 
Natasha?’
‘Oh, there was childish love?’ suddenly asked Prince An-
drew, blushing unexpectedly.
‘Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to 
love. Le cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.* Don’t you 
think so?’
*”Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.’
‘Oh, undoubtedly!’ said Prince Andrew, and with sud-
den and unnatural liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about 
the need to be very careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow 
cousins, and in the midst of these jesting remarks he rose, 
taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.
‘Well?’ asked Pierre, seeing his friend’s strange anima-
tion with surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on 
Natasha as he rose.
‘I must... I must have a talk with you,’ said Prince An-
drew. ‘You know that pair of women’s gloves?’ (He referred 
to the Masonic gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to 
present to the woman he loved.) ‘I... but no, I will talk to you 
later on,’ and with a strange light in his eyes and restlessness 
in his movements, Prince Andrew approached Natasha and 
sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince Andrew asked 
her something and how she flushed as she replied.
But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began in-
sisting that he should take part in an argument between the 
general and the colonel on the affairs in Spain.
Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never 

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left his face. The party was very successful and quite like 
other parties he had seen. Everything was similar: the la-
dies’ subtle talk, the cards, the general raising his voice at 
the card table, and the samovar and the tea cakes; only one 
thing was lacking that he had always seen at the evening