The Price of Love's Approval — War and Peace

Prince Andrew needs his father's consent to his marriage, and to obtain this he starts for the country next day. His father receives his son's communication with external composure but inward wrath. He cannot comprehend how anyone could wish to alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life is already ending. If only they would let me end my days as I want to, the old man thinks, then they might do as they please. With his son, however, he employs the diplomacy he reserves for important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discusses the whole matter. In the first place the marriage is not a brilliant one as regards birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Andrew is no longer as young as he had been and his health is poor, the old man lays special stress on this, while she is very young. Thirdly, he has a son whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. Fourthly and finally, looking ironically at his son, he begs him to put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as you wanted to for a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your love or passion or obstinacy, as you please, is still as great, marry. And that's my last word on it. Mind, the last, concluded in a tone which showed that nothing would make him alter his decision.

Andrew sees clearly that the old man hopes that his feelings, or his fiancée's, will not stand a year's test, or that he himself will die before then, and he decides to conform to his father's wish: to propose, and postpone the wedding for a year. Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostóvs, he returns to Petersburg. Next day after her talk with her mother Natásha expects Bolkónski all day, but he does not come. On the second and third day it is the same. Pierre does not come either, and Natásha, not knowing that Andrew has gone to see his father, cannot explain his absence to herself. Three weeks pass in this way. She has no desire to go out anywhere and wanders from room to room like a shadow, idle and listless; she weeps secretly at night and does not go to her mother in the evenings. She blushes continually and is irritable. It seems to her that everybody knows about her disappointment and is laughing at her and pitying her. Strong as is her inward grief, this wound to her vanity intensifies her misery. Once she comes to her mother, tries to say something, and suddenly begins to cry, tears of an offended child who does not know why it is being punished.

When he returns he asks the countess for Natásha's hand, wins consent and a secret year-long engagement. A whole year, Natásha repeats suddenly, only now realising that the marriage is to be postponed. But why a year? Why a year? Andrew begins to explain the reasons for this delay. Natásha does not hear him. And can't it be helped? He does not reply, but his face expresses the impossibility of altering that decision. It's awful, oh, it's awful, awful, she suddenly cries, and again bursts into sobs. I shall die, waiting a year: it's impossible, it's awful. She looks into her lover's face and sees in it a look of commiseration and perplexity. No, no, I'll do anything, she says, suddenly checking her tears. I am so happy. The father and mother come into the room and give the betrothed couple their blessing. From that day Prince Andrew begins to frequent the Rostóvs' as Natásha's affianced lover. He feels pity more than poetic desire; she has named the wait as awful, then called herself happy, and the house now holds a year it has not yet learned how to live.