The conversation at supper is not about politics or societies. It turns on the subject Nicholas likes best, recollections of 1812. Denisov starts these, and Pierre is particularly agreeable and amusing. The family separates on the most friendly terms. After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given instructions to the steward, goes to the bedroom in his dressing gown and finds his wife still at her table, writing. What are you writing, Mary? She blushes. She is afraid that what she is writing will not be understood or approved, has wanted to conceal it, and is glad he has surprised her and that she will now have to tell him. A diary, Nicholas. She hands him a blue exercise book filled with her firm, bold writing. It is in French. December 4. Today when Andrusha woke he did not wish to dress. She tried threats; he grew angrier. Then she left him alone and began with nurse's help to get the other children up, telling him she did not love him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then jumped out of bed, ran to her in his shirt, and sobbed. What troubled him most was that he had grieved her. In the evening when she gave him his ticket he cried again. One can do anything with him by tenderness. What is a ticket? Nicholas inquires. She has begun giving the elder ones marks every evening showing how they have behaved. He looks into the radiant eyes gazing at him and turns the pages. In the diary is set down everything in the children's lives that seems noteworthy as showing character or suggesting reflections on education.
They speak of Pierre. Mary says he is right there, but forgets that we have other duties nearer to us, duties indicated by God Himself, and that though we might expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children. Yes, that is just what I said to him, Nicholas puts in, fancying he really had said it. They insisted on love of one's neighbour and Christianity, and all this in the presence of young Nicholas, who had gone into the study and broken all my things. Ah, Nicholas, I am often troubled about little Nicholas, Mary says. He is such an exceptional boy. I am afraid I neglect him in favour of my own. We all have children and relations while he has no one. He is constantly alone with his thoughts. Nicholas, who at heart is not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but is always anxious to recognize that he is a fine lad, says she need not reproach herself. This evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and fancy, he had broken everything on my table to bits, and told me of it himself at once. I never knew him to tell an untruth. Still I am not the same as his own mother, Mary says. A wonderful boy, but I am dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have companions. Next summer I will take him to Petersburg, Nicholas says. Pierre always was a dreamer and always will be.
Mary cannot follow the details of her husband's plans. Thoughts flit through her mind of her nephew, of the boy's agitation while Pierre was speaking, of his gentle, sensitive character, and of her own children. She does not compare them with him, but compares her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and feels with regret that there is something lacking in her feeling for young Nicholas. Sometimes it seems to her that this difference arises from the difference in their ages, but she feels herself to blame and promises in her heart to do better, to accomplish the impossible, in this life to love her husband, her children, little Nicholas, and all her neighbours, as Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary's soul always strives toward the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute, and can therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the lofty, secret suffering of a soul burdened by the body appears on her face. Nicholas gazes at her. O God, what will become of us if she dies, as I always fear when her face is like that? He places himself before the icon and begins to say his evening prayers.
