ink of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff like a
shopman.

Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on her
lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the things he
showed her.

"That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the material.
"It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"

Pierre told her the price.

"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be and
Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added, unable to
suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb set with pearls,
of a kind then just coming into fashion.

"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned Pierre.

"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair. "When
I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be fashionable again
by then. Well, let's go now."

And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and then to
the old countess' rooms.

The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing
grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing
room with parcels under their arms.

The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with a
frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper lip
had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.

After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession, she
felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left
without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or kept
awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She wanted
nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity only death
could give her. But until death came she had to go on living, that is,
to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in very young children
and very old people was particularly evident in her. Her life had
no external aims--only a need to exercise her various functions and
inclinations was apparent. She had to eat, sleep, think, speak, weep,
work, give vent to her anger, and so on, merely because she had a
stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a liver. She did these things not
under any external impulse as people in the full vigor of life do,
when behind the purpose for which they strive that of exercising their
functions remains unnoticed. She talked only because she physically
needed to exercise her tongue and lungs. She cried as a child does,
because her nose had to be cleare