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Leo Tolstoy
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Natasha urged Pierre to Petersburg for Prince Theodore's society but fixed a return date; he overstayed by a fortnight. She grew alarmed depressed irritable; Denisov saw a dull dejected shadow of the former enchantress. She dismissed the societies she once valued and nursed baby Petya for comfort, overfeeding him until he fell ill. When Pierre's sleigh arrived she flushed with joy then overwhelmed him with reproach about spoiled milk and Petya near death. Pierre knew he was not to blame and that the storm would pass; they reconciled in the nursery where he dandled the baby. Nicholas coldly called the infant a lump of flesh; Natasha praised Pierre's nursing hands.
Natasha greets Pierre with joy then reproaches him for enjoying Petersburg while she nursed a sick baby alone. Pierre knows the storm will pass because fear not fault drives it.
When someone explodes at your return, ask what they carried alone before you defend yourself.
Pierre's return lifts the whole Bald Hills household: servants expect gifts, children await dances, young Nicholas hero-worships his uncle, and the old countess exercises her dwindling functions At Bald Hills Pierre's return means different things in each household world merging into one whole. Servants rejoice because Nicholas will stop daily estate drudgery and holiday presents arrive..
What this chapter proves — the pattern beneath the scene
In this chapter, the lesson is Building Authentic Relationships.
The card below names the pattern this chapter proves — carry it with you into the original text.
Building Authentic Relationships
Pierre comes home from captivity to Natasha's love and to the ordinary frictions of a real marriage. Reproaches prove the bond is not a tableau. They speak in glances and shorthand. The epilogue is credible because it is imperfect, daily, and chosen again after the war has ended.
Key Insight
Enduring connection includes conflict. A relationship that cannot survive a reproach was a performance. The kitchen argument is often more honest than the proposal.
Chapter 348
Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the Rostóvs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to come to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were being discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the principal founders. On reading that letter (she always read her husband’s letters) Natásha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel his absence very acutely. She attributed immense importance to all her husband’s intellectual and abstract interests though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a hindrance…
Public-domain chapter text, formatted for reading.
Think of a time when someone close to you got angry about something small right after a reunion or return. Write down what they said they were mad about, then dig deeper - what were they really feeling underneath? Now flip it: recall a time you did this to someone else. What was your surface complaint versus your deeper emotional need?
Write about a time when you carried too much alone and then took it out on the wrong person. What would you say differently now if you could name your real feelings first?
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Other theme-by-theme analyses from this book.
Start with a tavern in the rain, then Karataev, Nicholas at the plow, and the domestic language after the war.
Stay with Andrei under the Austerlitz sky, then at Yaroslavl, when pride finally has no work left.
Follow Pierre from the salon and the inheritance through Borodino to Karataev's prison circle, and see purpose arrive when the systems fail.
Put Pierre's fortune and Hélène's match next to Napoleon in occupied Moscow, and ask what the triumph was for.
Sit with Tolstoy at Borodino and in the Second Epilogue, and watch the great-man story come apart.
Deep diving the literary elements.
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