h her mother, that is to
say, in Nicholas' house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often seen
in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her
and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked
solitude--she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even thought
that she did not--but with her pregnancies, her confinements, the
nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of her husband's life,
she had demands on her time which could be satisfied only by renouncing
society. All who had known Natasha before her marriage wondered at the
change in her as at something extraordinary. Only the old countess with
her maternal instinct had realized that all Natasha's outbursts had
been due to her need of children and a husband--as she herself had once
exclaimed at Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest--and her mother
was now surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never
understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that
Natasha would make an exemplary wife and mother.

"Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all
bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd."

Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,
especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let herself
go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, should be
even more careful of her appearance than when she was unmarried, and
should fascinate her husband as much as she did before he became her
husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once abandoned all her witchery,
of which her singing had been an unusually powerful part. She gave it up
just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with
her manners or with delicacy of speech, or with her toilet, or to show
herself to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, or to avoid
inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She acted in contradiction
to all those rules. She felt that the allurements instinct had formerly
taught her to use would now be merely ridiculous in the eyes of
her husband, to whom she had from the first moment given herself up
entirely--that is, with her whole soul, leaving no corner of it hidden
from him. She felt that her unity with her husband was not maintained
by the poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by something
else--indefinite but firm as the bond between her own body and soul.

To fluff out her cur