THE TERRIBLE NEWS of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed and wounded, and the even more terrible news of the loss of Moscow reached Voronezh in the middle of September. Princess Marya, learning of her brother's wound only from the newspapers, and having no definite information about him, was preparing (so Nikolay heard, though he had not seen her) to set off to try and reach Prince Andrey.
On hearing the news of the battle of Borodino and of the abandonment of Moscow, Rostov felt, not despair, rage, revenge, nor any such feeling, but a sudden weariness and vexation with everything at Voronezh, and a sense of awkwardness and uneasy conscience. All the conversations he listened to seemed to him insincere; he did not know what to think of it all, and felt that only in the regiment1 would all become clear to him again. He made haste to conclude the purchase of horses, and was often without good cause ill-tempered with his servant and quarter-master.
Several days before Rostov's departure there was a thanksgiving service in the cathedral for the victory gained by the Russian troops, and Nikolay went to the service. He was a little behind the governor, and was standing2 through the service meditating3 with befitting sedateness4 on the most various subjects. When the service was concluding, the governor's wife beckoned5 him to her.
“Did you see the princess?” she said, with a motion of her hand towards a lady in black standing behind the choir6.
Nikolay recognised Princess Marya at once, not so much from the profile he saw under her hat as from the feeling of watchful7 solicitude8, awe9, and pity which came over him at once. Princess Marya, obviously buried in her own thoughts, was making the last signs of the cross before leaving the church.
Nikolay gazed in wonder at her face. It was the same face he had seen before; there was the same general look of refined, inner, spiritual travail10; but now there was an utterly11 different light in it. There was a touching12 expression of sadness, of prayer and of hope in it. With the same absence of hesitation13 as he had felt before in her presence, without waiting for the governor's wife to urge him, without asking himself whether it were right, whether it were proper for him to address her here in church, Nikolay went up to her, and said he had heard of her trouble and grieved with his whole heart to hear of it. As soon as she heard his voice, a vivid colour glowed in her face, lighting14 up at once her joy and her sorrow.
“One thing I wanted to tell you, princess,” said Rostov, “that is, that if Prince Andrey Nikolaevitch were not living, since he is a colonel, it would be announced immediately in the gazettes.”
The princess looked at him, not comprehending his words, but comforted by the expression of sympathetic suffering in his face.
“And I know from so many instances that a wound from a splinter” (the papers said it was from a grenade) “is either immediately fatal or else very slight,” Nikolay went on. “We must hope for the best, and I am certain …”
Princess Marya interrupted him.
“Oh, it would be so aw …” she began, and her emotion choking her utterance15, she bent16 her head with a graceful17 gesture, like everything she did in his presence, and glancing gratefully at him followed her aunt.
That evening Nikolay did not go out anywhere, but stayed at home to finish some accounts with the horse-vendors. By the time he had finished his work it was rather late to go out anywhere, but still early to go to bed, and Nikolay spent a long while walking up and down the room, thinking over his life, a thing that he rarely did.
Princess Marya had made an agreeable impression on him at Bogutcharovo. The fact of his meeting her then in such striking circumstances, and of his mother having at one time pitched precisely18 on her as the wealthy heiress suitable for him, had led him to look at her with special attention. During his stay at Voronezh, that impression had become, not merely a pleasing, but a very strong one. Nikolay was impressed by the peculiar19, moral beauty which he discerned in her at this time. He had, however, been preparing to go away, and it had not entered his head to regret that in leaving Voronezh he was losing all chance of seeing her. But his meeting with Princess Marya that morning in church had, Nikolay felt, gone more deeply to his heart than he had anticipated and more deeply than he desired for his peace of mind. That pale, delicate, melancholy20 face, those luminous21 eyes, those soft, gracious gestures, and, above all, the deep and tender melancholy expressed in all her features, agitated22 him and drew his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear an appearance of higher, spiritual life (it was why he did not like Prince Andrey), he spoke23 of it contemptuously as philosophy, idealism; but in Princess Marya it was just in that melancholy, showing all the depth of a spiritual world, strange and remote to Nikolay, that he found an irresistible24 attraction.
“She must be a marvellous girl! An angel, really!” he said to himself. “Why am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sonya?” And involuntarily he compared the two: the poverty of the one and the wealth of the other in those spiritual gifts, which Nikolay was himself without and therefore prized so highly. He tried to picture what would have happened if he had been free, and in what way he would have made her an offer and she would have become his wife. No, he could not imagine that. A feeling of dread25 came over him and that picture would take no definite shape. With Sonya he had long ago made his picture of the future, and it was all so simple and clear, just because it was all made up and he knew all there was in Sonya. But with Princess Marya he could not picture his future life, because he did not understand her—he simply loved her.
There was something light-hearted, something of child's play in his dreams of Sonya. But to dream of Princess Marya was difficult and a little terrible.
“How she was praying!” he thought. “One could see that her whole soul was in her prayer. Yes, it was that prayer that moves mountains, and I am convinced that her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I want?” he bethought himself. “What do I want? Freedom, release from Sonya. She was right,” he thought of what the governor's wife had said, “nothing but misery26 can come of my marrying her. Muddle27, mamma's grief … our position … a muddle, a fearful muddle! Besides, I don't even love her. No, I don't love her in the right way. My God! take me out of this awful, hopeless position!” he began praying all at once. “Yes, prayer will move mountains, but one must believe, and not pray, as Natasha and I prayed as children for the snow to turn into sugar, and then ran out into the yard to try whether it had become sugar. No; but I am not praying for trifles now,” he said, putting his pipe down in the corner and standing with clasped hands before the holy picture. And softened28 by the thought of Princess Marya, he began to pray as he had not prayed for a long while. He had tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat when Lavrushka came in at the door with papers.
“Blockhead! bursting in when you're not wanted!” said Nikolay, quickly changing his attitude.
“A courier has come,” said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice, “from the governor, a letter for you.”
“Oh, very well, thanks, you can go!”
Nikolay took the two letters. One was from his mother, the other from Sonya. He knew them from the handwriting, and broke open Sonya's letter first. He had hardly read a few lines when his face turned white and his eyes opened wide in dismay and joy. “No, it's not possible!” he said aloud. Unable to sit still, he began walking to and fro in the room, holding the letter in both hands as he read it. He skimmed through the letter, then read it through once and again, and shrugging his shoulders and flinging up his hands, he stood still in the middle of the room with wide-open mouth and staring eyes. What he had just been praying for with the assurance that God would answer his prayer had come to pass; but Nikolay was astounded29 at it as though it were something extraordinary, and as though he had not expected it, and as though the very fact of its coming to pass so quickly proved that it had not come from God, to whom he had been praying, but was some ordinary coincidence.
The knot fastening his freedom, that had seemed so impossible to disentangle, had been undone30 by this unexpected and, as it seemed to Nikolay, uncalled-for letter from Sonya. She wrote that their late misfortunes, the loss of almost the whole of the Rostovs' property in Moscow, and the countess's frequently expressed desire that Nikolay should marry Princess Bolkonsky, and his silence and coldness of late, all taken together led her to decide to set him free from his promise, and to give him back complete liberty.
“It would be too painful to me to think that I could be a cause of sorrow and discord31 in the family which has overwhelmed me with benefits,” she wrote; “and the one aim of my love is the happiness of those I love, and therefore I beseech32 you, Nicolas, to consider yourself free, and to know that in spite of everything, no one can love you more truly than your—SONYA.”
Both letters were from Troitsa. The other letter was from the countess. It described the last days in Moscow, the departure, the fire and the loss of the whole of their property. The countess wrote too that Prince Andrey had been among the train of wounded soldiers who had travelled with them. He was still in a very critical condition, but that the doctor said now that there was more hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing him.
With this letter Nikolay went next day to call on Princess Marya. Neither Nikolay nor Princess Marya said a word as to all that was implied by the words: “Natasha is nursing him”; but thanks to this letter, Nikolay was brought suddenly into intimate relations, almost those of a kinsman33 with the princess.
Next day Rostov escorted Princess Marya as far as Yaroslavl, and a few days later he set off himself to join his regiment.
有关波罗底诺战役及我方伤亡人数的可怕消息，以及莫斯科失守的更可怕的消息，沃罗沃日是在九月中旬收到的。玛丽亚公爵小姐只是从官方报纸上知道哥哥负伤，尚未接获有关他的任何其他消息，尼古拉听说（他本人还未见到她），她打算去寻找安德烈公爵。
在得到波罗底诺战役和放弃莫斯科的消息后，罗斯托夫不是感到绝望与敌意或有复仇情绪，而是怀有类似在沃罗涅日突然令人寂寞惆怅的感觉，不知怎么一切都使他觉得羞愧和不安，他听到的所有的谈话在他看来都是不诚恳的，装腔作势的，他不知道如何判断这一切，因而觉得，只有回到团里去，一切才会弄明白。他急着要办完采购马匹的事，时常对仆人和司务长发脾气。
在罗斯托夫启程的前几天，大教堂预定举行庆祝俄军取胜的祈祷，尼古拉也去参加礼拜。他站在省长稍后面一点，他带着做礼拜的庄重神情，同时想着一个接一个的各种各样的问题，站完了这次礼拜。当祈祷结束时，省长夫人召他至身边。
“你看见公爵小姐吗？”省长夫人说，用头提示唱诗班后面穿黑衣服的女士。
尼古拉立即认出玛丽亚公爵小姐，他认出她与其说是凭她帽子下面露出的面孔侧部的轮廓，不如说是凭那种谨慎翼翼、恐惧和怜悯感情，这种感情马上支配了他。玛丽亚公爵小姐显然心事重重，正在划着离开教堂前的最后一次十字。
尼古拉惊奇地看着她的脸。这依旧是他以前见过的那张脸，脸上面依旧挂着那种细微的内在的精神活动产生的一般表情；但它现在亮着完全异样的光。脸上流露着令人心碎的悲伤、求告和希望的表情。像以前尼古拉在她面前有过的情形一样，不等省长夫人示意，也不问自己在这教堂里同她交谈好不好，，有没有礼貌，便迳直朝她走去说，他听说有关她的不幸的情形，他整个的心同情着她的哥哥。她一听到他的声音，脸上顿时涌现出明艳的光采，在同一时刻闪现出又是悲伤又是喜悦的光芒。
“我想到要告诉您一件事，公爵小姐，”罗斯托夫说，“这便是，假如安德烈·尼古拉耶维奇公爵已不在人世，作为上校军官，官报上立刻会登出讣闻的。”
公爵小姐看着他，虽不明白他说的话，但他脸上的同情而难受的表情使她感到欣慰。
“我还知道许多这样的例子：被弹片炸伤（官报上说：被榴弹炸伤）要么是立刻致命，要么相反，是很轻的伤，”尼古拉说。“应该往好的方面想，同时我相信……”
公爵小姐打断他的话。
“啊，这简直太可怕了……”她开始说，但激动得没把话说完，（像她通常在他面前那样）优雅地低下头去，感激地看他一眼，然后跟着姨母走了。
这一天的晚上，尼古拉未去任何地方作客，而是留在屋里同卖马的商人结清几笔帐。当他办完事情，时间已经很晚，不便上哪里去了，但睡觉又还早，尼古拉就在房里独自长久地踱来踱去，考虑今后的生活，这在他还是难得的事。
玛丽亚公爵小姐在斯摩棱斯克郊外给他留下了愉快的印象。他当时在那样特殊的情况下遇见她，有一段时间，他的母亲向他指出的富家配偶就正是她，以上的情况使得他对她特别注意。在沃罗涅日，在他访问的时候，这个印象不仅愉快，而且强烈。这一次尼古拉在她身上看到的那种特别的精神上的美，使他十分惊奇。但他准备离去，他脑子里也并不惋惜离开沃罗涅日便失去见到公爵小姐的机会。但今天与玛丽亚公爵小姐在教堂的会面，（尼古拉有这样的感觉），出乎他所预料更深刻地留在他的心中，比保持心境平静的愿望更加强烈。这苍白的清秀的悲伤的脸，这明亮的目光，这安静而优雅的举止，主要的是——她的脸上流露的深沉的柔情的哀愁，使他不安，使他不能漠不关心。在男人们身上，罗斯托夫看不惯男人中间这种崇高精神生活的表现（他因此不喜欢安德烈公爵），他鄙夷地把这称之为哲学、空想；但在玛丽亚公爵小姐身上，正是这种尼古拉认为陌生的精神世界所表露的极度悲痛中，他感觉到一股不可抗拒的吸力。
“真是美妙的姑娘！是一位天使呢！”他对自己说。“为什么我不自由呢？为什么我急于向索尼娅表白爱情呢？”他不知不觉地在心里比较这两者：一个精神天赋贫乏，一个则富有，他就由于贫乏而倍加珍视精神天赋。他在心里设想一下如果他没有受到约束，情况会怎样。他就会向她求婚，她就会成为他的妻子吧？不，他不能设想。他害怕起来，而他也想不出任何清晰的样子。他对索尼娅则早已描绘好一副未来的图景，而那一切都是简单明了的。其原因正是那一切都是想好了的，而且他知道索尼娅的全部情形；但对玛丽亚公爵小姐，他无法设想出未来的生活，因为他不了解她，只是爱着她。
对索尼娅的遐想含有一种快活的嬉戏的成分。而想到玛丽亚公爵小姐时，总觉得难受，而且有点害怕。
“她在怎样祈祷啊！”他回忆着，“显而易见，她整个的心都沉浸在祈祷中。是啊，那是能把山脉搬动的祈祷，我相信，她的祈求能够实现。为什么我不为我所需要的东西祈祷呢？”他想起来了。“我需要什么呢？自由，同索尼娅了结。她说得对（他想起省长夫人的话），我娶了她，除了不幸，不会有别的结果。一个解不开的结，乱糟糟的，妈咪的痛苦……家业……一团糟，可怕的混乱！是的，我也并不爱她。是的，我没有好好地爱她。上帝啊！指引我走出这可怕的没有出路的困境吧！”他突然开始祈祷，“是的，祷告可以移动山脉，但要有信心，别像我小时候同娜塔莎祈祷雪变成自糖那样，我们跑到院子里去亲口尝它，看雪是否变成了糖粒。不，我现在不为那些小事祈祷了。”说完之后，他在房间的一角放上烟斗，交叉双手在圣像前站定。于是，因想念玛丽亚公爵小姐而变得多情的尼古拉开始祈祷，他很久都没有这样祈祷了。眼泪涌出眼眶，并在喉咙里哽咽着，这时，拉夫鲁什卡拿着什么公文走进门来。
“混蛋！钻进来干什么，又没有叫你！”尼古拉说，飞快地改变姿势。
“省长那里，”拉夫鲁什卡用没有睡醒的声音说，“派来了送信人，给您的信。”
“呶，好的，谢谢，走开！”
尼古拉拿过两封信来。一封是母亲的，一封是索尼娅的。他一看笔迹就认出来了，于是先拆开索尼娅的信。还没有读完几行，脸色就发白，眼睛也惊吓地高兴地睁得大大的。
“不，这不可能！”他说出声来。他坐不住了，捧着信一边读，一边在房里走来走去。他先浏览一通，然后仔细读一遍，又一遍，耸起肩膀，摊开双手站在房间中央，嘴张着，眼睛停止了转动。他刚才怀着上帝能使他的祈求实现的信心所祷告的事，现在实现了；但他为此感到惊奇，仿佛这是某种非同寻常的事，仿佛他从未料到这件事，事情这样快地成功仿佛可以证明，这不是出自他恳求的上帝的许诺，而是由于平常的偶然性。
那一个看似难解的结子（它约束着罗斯托夫的自由），被这封意料不到的（尼古拉这样觉得）不招自来的索尼娅的信解开了。索尼娅写道，近来不幸的境遇是罗斯托夫家在莫斯科的财产几乎丧失殆尽，伯爵夫人多次表示要尼古拉娶博尔孔斯卡娅公爵小姐的愿望，还有他近来的沉默和冷淡——所有这一切促使她决定放弃他的承诺，给他充分的自由。
“当我想到我会成为眷顾我的家庭的痛苦或不和睦的原因，我感到沉痛不已”，她写道，“而我的爱情只有一个目的，即使我爱着的人们获得幸福；因此，我恳求您，Nicolas，现在把您自己看成是自由的，同时要知道，无论如何，谁也不能爱您胜过您的索尼娅。”
两封信都寄自特罗伊茨。另一封是伯爵夫人写的。这封信里，叙述了离开莫斯科前几日的情况，启程，大火和全部财产的毁坏。伯爵夫人在信里还附带说，安德烈公爵在伤员中同他们一道走。他的伤势很危险，但医生现在说还大有希望。索尼娅和娜塔莎像看护妇一样照料着她。
尼古拉第二天带着这封信去访问玛丽亚公爵小姐。尼古拉和玛丽亚公爵小姐都绝口不谈“娜塔莎照料着他”可能有的含意；但由于这封信，尼古拉和公爵小姐一下子亲近得像有了亲缘关系。
再过一天，尼古拉送玛丽亚公爵小姐启程去雅罗斯拉夫尔，几天之后，自己也动身回团。
收听单词发音 |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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sedateness
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| n.安详，镇静 | |
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beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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travail
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| n.阵痛；努力 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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astounded
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| v.使震惊(astound的过去式和过去分词)；愕然；愕；惊讶 | |
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undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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31
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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beseech
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| v.祈求，恳求 | |
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kinsman
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| n.男亲属 | |
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