tle ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to her, and so on--and
these pictures of the future had given him pleasure. But with Princess
Mary, to whom they were trying to get him engaged, he could never
picture anything of future married life. If he tried, his pictures
seemed incongruous and false. It made him afraid.

CHAPTER VII

The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed and
wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow reached
Voronezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having learned of
her brother's wound only from the Gazette and having no definite news of
him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her again himself) to
set off in search of Prince Andrew.

When he received the news of the battle of Borodino and the abandonment
of Moscow, Rostov was not seized with despair, anger, the desire for
vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but everything in Voronezh
suddenly seemed to him dull and tiresome, and he experienced an
indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The conversations he heard
seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to judge all these affairs
and felt that only in the regiment would everything again become clear
to him. He made haste to finish buying the horses, and often became
unreasonably angry with his servant and squadron quartermaster.

A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which
Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian victory.
He stood a little behind the governor and held himself with military
decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of subjects.
When the service was over the governor's wife beckoned him to her.

"Have you seen the princess?" she asked, indicating with a movement of
her head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond the choir.

Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the profile
he saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude, timidity, and
pity that immediately overcame him. Princess Mary, evidently engrossed
by her thoughts, was crossing herself for the last time before leaving
the church.

Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he had
seen before, there was the same general expression of refined, inner,
spiritual labor, but now it was quite differently lit up. There was a
pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had occurred
before when she was present, Ni