unders.

On reading that letter (she always read her husband's letters) Natasha
herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel
his absence very acutely. She attributed immense importance to all
her husband's intellectual and abstract interests though she did not
understand them, and she always dreaded being a hindrance to him in such
matters. To Pierre's timid look of inquiry after reading the letter she
replied by asking him to go, but to fix a definite date for his return.
He was given four weeks' leave of absence.

Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a fortnight
before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and
irritability.

Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with
the present state of affairs, had arrived during that fortnight. He
looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad likeness of a
person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies, and talk about
the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former enchantress.

Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother,
her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to console her
tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning.

"It's all nonsense, all rubbish--those discussions which lead to nothing
and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very affairs
in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.

And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one
else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this
little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she was
conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his little
nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous, you would
like to pay him out, you are afraid--but here am I! And I am he..." and
that was unanswerable. It was more than true.

During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for
comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him and
he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was just
what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety about her
husband more easily.

She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre's sleigh was heard
at the front door, and the old nurse--knowing how to please her
mistress--entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a beaming
face.

"Has he com