et looking at Sonya she agreed with Natasha's
explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her position
trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower.
She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of the family as a
whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to the
home. She waited on the old countess, petted and spoiled the children,
was always ready to render the small services for which she had a gift,
and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with insufficient
gratitude.

The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the same
scale as under the old prince.

The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more than
simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of wood,
plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished with
very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their own
serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was spacious
and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for visitors. Whole
families of the Rostovs' and Bolkonskis' relations sometimes came to
Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of servants and stayed for
months. Besides that, four times a year, on the name days and birthdays
of the hosts, as many as a hundred visitors would gather there for a day
or two. The rest of the year life pursued its unbroken routine with its
ordinary occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers,
provided out of the produce of the estate.

CHAPTER IX

It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha had
been staying at her brother's with her husband and children since early
autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his own for three
weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven weeks and was
expected back every minute.

Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas' old friend the retired General
Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this fifth of
December.

On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of
visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for
a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to
the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would come to
congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about the elections
of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to spend the eve
of that d