Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I lived
in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!"

And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,
Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew
without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was Anatole
Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and with whom
Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in order to be
married secretly.

Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was told
him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince Andrew's
deeply loved affianced wife--the same Natasha Rostova who used to be so
charming--should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole who was already
secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in love with him as
to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre could not conceive
and could not imagine.

He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha, whom
he had known from a child, with this new conception of her baseness,
folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all alike!" he
said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man unfortunate
enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied Prince Andrew to
the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded pride, and the more
he pitied his friend the more did he think with contempt and even with
disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him in the ballroom with
such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that Natasha's soul was
overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation, and that it was not
her fault that her face happened to assume an expression of calm dignity
and severity.

"But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna. "He
could not marry--he is married!"

"Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna. "A
nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him--expecting
him since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on
expecting him."

After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and giving
vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya Dmitrievna
told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that the count or
Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew of this affair
(which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge Anatole to a duel,
and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his