Rostov family

“ Natásha and Nicholas often noticed their parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostóv house and estate near Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal, and life at Otrádnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count’s house. ”

“ To kill me? Me whom everyone is so fond of?” He remembered his mother’s love for him, and his family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to kill him seemed impossible. “But perhaps they may do it!” For more than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the situation. The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was already so close that the expression of his face could be seen. And the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostóv. ”

“ Every young man who came to the house—seeing those impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own happiness) , feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the fitful bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly prattle of young girls ready for anything and full of hope—experienced the same feeling; sharing with the young folk of the Rostóvs' household a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.
Among the young men introduced by Rostóv one of the first was Dólokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natásha. ”

“ Rostóv was struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on Dólokhov's face.
“Well? How do you feel?” he asked.
“Bad! But it's not that, my friend” said Dólokhov with a gasping voice. “Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have killed her, killed. . . She won't get over it! She won't survive.. . .”
“Who?” asked Rostóv.
“My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother,” and Dólokhov pressed Rostóv's hand and burst into tears. ”

“ With the naïve conviction of young men in a merry mood that other men’s wives were created for them, Rostóv did not leave the lady’s side and treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style, as if, without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and the lady would get on together. ”

“ Any one who has read Tolstoy's personal reminiscences will readily agree that the parents whom he describes in the novel Childhood are not his own. In fact, so far as we know, in the father was represented A.M. Islenev, a neighboring landowner and a friend of Tolstoy's father. The mother is an imaginary character. But in War and Peace it is not difficult to find an artistic description of his parents in the persons of Count Nikolay Ilich Rostov and Princess Mariya Volkonskaya. ”

“ Rostóv felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he left home now for the first time after eighteen months again brightened his soul and his face.
“No, but listen,” she said, “now you are quite a man, aren’t you? I’m awfully glad you’re my brother.” She touched his mustache. “I want to know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?”
“Why did Sónya run away?” asked Rostóv. ”

“ The other public buildings include six 17th-century churches, a museum and a cathedral, consecrated in 1231 and having its interior walls covered with paintings.
Rostov was founded by Slavs in or before 862, and played so prominent a role in the history of that part of Russia that it used to be known as Rostov the Great. From the beginning of the 11th century to the 13th it was the chief town of a territory which included large parts of the present governments of Yaroslavl, Vladimir and Novgorod. ”

“ Now then, Natásha, now then, dearest! Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She’s taken it! Thank God!” And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si he sung a second, a third below the high note. “Ah, God! How fine! Did I really take it? How fortunate!” he thought.
Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was finest in Rostóv’s soul! And this something was apart from everything else in the world and above everything in the world. “What were losses, and Dólokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy....” ”

“ Large towns are few and far between, but the villages are numerous. There are three or four cities of 25,000 or 30,000 inhabitants, markets for the grain and other produce of the country, in a thousand miles, but people there are accustomed to long distances. Rostov is the scene of the commercial transactions of the population for 300 miles or more on both sides of it. ”

“ Chance brings Andréi to the young girl’s paternal mansion: he falls in love with her, and with this new love begins the renewal of life.
The house of the Rostofs is the third of the seignorial homes which Tolstoï opens to us, and it is the one where it is the easiest thing to forget [Pg 287] one’s self. Songs only are heard, merry laughter, the chatter of fresh voices. The head of the family, Count Rostof, is a great proprietor, ostentatious, but free from arrogance, and is carelessly hurrying to his ruin; but no one better than he understands the duties of hospitality. ”

“ Oh, what a fellow you are!”
The governor’s wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady with a blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with the most important personages of the town. This was Malvíntseva, Princess Mary’s aunt on her mother’s side, a rich, childless widow who always lived in Vorónezh. When Rostóv approached her she was standing settling up for the game. She looked at him and, screwing up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the general who had won from her. ”

“ After that, young Rostóv took no further part in any business affairs, but devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new pursuits—the chase—for which his father kept a large establishment. ”

“ Though she had firmly resolved not to call on the Rostóvs again and to forget the whole matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position. And when she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit that it was her relation to Rostóv. His cold, polite manner did not express his feeling for her (she knew that) but it concealed something, and until she could discover what that something was, she felt that she could not be at ease.
One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her nephew's lessons, she was informed that Rostóv had called. ”

“ Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what used to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natásha’s wildly bright eyes, Rostóv re-entered that world of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best joys of his life; ”

“ But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is alone with her, so Rostóv, now that he had attained what he had longed for more than anything else in the world, did not know how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so. ”

“ Rostóv had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was well contented with his life. ”

“ Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large sitting room, when Rostóv was shown in. She could not grasp who he was and why he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his Russian face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered recognized him as a man of her own class, she glanced at him with her deep radiant look and began speaking in a voice that faltered and trembled with emotion. This meeting immediately struck Rostóv as a romantic event. “A helpless girl overwhelmed with grief, left to the mercy of coarse, rioting peasants! ”

“ At posting stations, at inns, and in the landowner's snuggery, maidservants had been flattered by his notice, and here too at the governor's party there were (as it seemed to Nicholas) an inexhaustible number of pretty young women, married and unmarried, impatiently awaiting his notice. The women and girls flirted with him and, from the first day, the old people concerned themselves to get this fine young daredevil of an hussar married and settled down. Among these was the governor's wife herself, who welcomed Rostóv as a near relative and called him “Nicholas.” ”

“ Dólokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostóv in a way no one would have expected of him.
“I know people consider me a bad man!” he said. “Let them! I don't care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love so that I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle if they stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two or three friends—you among them—and as for the rest I only care about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them are harmful, especially the women. ”

“ See!” she said, but could not maintain herself on her toes any longer. “So that’s what I’m up to! I’ll never marry anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don’t tell anyone.”
Rostóv laughed so loud and merrily that Denísov, in his bedroom, felt envious and Natásha could not help joining in.
“No, but don’t you think it’s nice?” she kept repeating.
“Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Borís?”
Natásha flared up. “I don’t want to marry anyone. And I’ll tell him so when I see him!”
“Dear me!” said Rostóv.
“But that’s all rubbish,” Natásha chattered on. “And is Denísov nice?” she asked. ”

“ Túshin had not returned, the doctor had not come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was sitting naked at the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow body.
"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostóv. "There is no one to help me or pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He sighed and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.
"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt and added: "What a lot of men have been crippled today—frightful!"
Rostóv did not listen to the soldier. ”

“ No, this is really beyond anything, my dear count,” said she to Count Rostóv who had followed her in. “How can you live in Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won’t let you off! Mademoiselle George will recite at my house tonight and there’ll be some people, and if you don’t bring your lovely girls—who are prettier than Mademoiselle George—I won’t know you! My husband is away in Tver or I would send him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must! ”

“ When she had finished, she stepped aside and stopped at the door with a smile on her face. “Here I am. I am she! Now do you understand 'Uncle'?” her expression said to Rostóv. How could one help understanding? Not only Nicholas, but even Natásha understood the meaning of his puckered brow and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips when Anísya Fëdorovna entered. ”

“ When Rostóv went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on the table. Denísov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a sheet of paper. He looked gloomily in Rostóv’s face and said: “I am witing to her.”
He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and, evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to write, told Rostóv the contents of his letter.
“You see, my fwiend,” he said, “we sleep when we don’t love. We are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God, one is pua’ as on the fihst day of cweation... ”

“ Rostóv noticed something new in Dólokhov’s relations with Sónya, but he did not explain to himself what these new relations were. “They’re always in love with someone,” he thought of Sónya and Natásha. But he was not as much at ease with Sónya and Dólokhov as before and was less frequently at home. ”

“ As it is we have worn the poor girl out,” said Márya Dmítrievna. “My advice to you is finish your business and go back home to Otrádnoe... and wait there.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Natásha.
“Yes, go back,” said Márya Dmítrievna, “and wait there. If your betrothed comes here now—there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to you.”
Count Rostóv approved of this suggestion, appreciating its reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on ”

“ During Rostóv’s short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he did not draw closer to Sónya, but rather drifted away from her. She was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many other things. When he thought of Sónya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself, “Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom I do not yet know. ”