III.
An analysis mingled with characteristic quotations might be able to give some slight idea of the romance “Kazaki,” might give the reader a hint of its interest, its color, and its flavor of originality. An analysis of “War and Peace” can have no other aim, no other pretension, than to point out Tolstoï’s design in this colossal work, and separate the moralist’s tendencies from the story itself, which every one will want to read, and read again, in detail.
In “War and Peace,” amid a multitude of thoroughly interesting figures, there are three heroes who in some measure occupy the foreground, and who stand out clearly against a background of great variety, carefully studied, and peopled with living beings. These three characters are Andréi Bolkonsky, Nikolaï Rostof, and Pierre Bezúkhof. The last mentioned is not at first glance the one who is most attractive in outward appearances; but it is the one whose moral nature is most curious, the one in whom the author has expressed his own inmost views, the one who, in his eyes, best illustrates the striking faults and the fundamental virtues of a Russian nature. Bezúkhof’s qualities are exactly those of the men of the Slav race: he is good, gentle, loyal, compassionate; his faults are indolence, apathy, fickleness in his tastes, incapability of following a given course, inaptitude in realizing his own volitions.
Thus after having given his word not to attend a soirée at Prince Anatol Kuragin’s, Pierre Bezúkhof goes there, becomes intoxicated, then with the aid of another gay spirit, Dolokhof, fastens a police-agent to the back of a tame young bear, and throws them both into the river. Dolokhof is degraded; Pierre escapes with a few months’ exile from the capital. In the same way Bezúkhof is perfectly convinced that Elen Kurágina’s beauty and the dazzling whiteness of her shoulders do not hinder her from being dangerous on account of her coquetry; he has heard mysterious rumors concerning her equivocal relations with his brother, the last of the debauchees; he is perfectly convinced that it would be foolish to the last degree to marry this admirable character, and that the best way of not committing this folly is to give up seeing her charming face, her seductive snowy complexion. Unhappily for him, her marble shoulders, neck, and bosom, one evening, came close to his poor near-sighted eyes, and all “is so near to his lips that he had scarcely to bend a hair’s breadth to impress them upon it.” Pierre Bezúkhof does not depart more: he allows himself to be married, partly through infatuation, partly through feebleness.
The marriage almost from the very first turns out ill. The rake Dolokhof has returned, and never leaves Bezúkhof’s house. Pierre long puts up with a situation, the meaning of which he does not suspect: the inevitable anonymous letter comes to open his eyes. At first he refuses to believe what he has been told; but at the club where he meets Dolokhof, it is sufficient for him to find himself face to face with his wife’s lover, for his jealousy to burst forth with a flash like a discharge of electricity. The first pretext gives Pierre cause for a quarrel, and a duel follows. Dolokhof is a crack marksman: he has no sort of feebleness. Pierre Bezúkhof is near-sighted, awkward: he has never fired a pistol in his life. But, as if by judgment of God, it is Dolokhof who falls.
Returning home, Pierre Bezúkhof tries vainly to sleep, so as to forget all that has just passed. He cannot close his eyes. “He got up, and began to pace up and down the room with uneven steps. Now he thought of the early days of their marriage, of her beautiful shoulders, of her languishing, passionate gaze; now he pictured Dolokhof standing by her, handsome, impudent, with his diabolic smile, just as he had seen him at the club dinner; now he saw him pale, shivering, vanquished, and sinking on the snow.
“‘And, after all, I have killed her lover,’ he said to himself; ‘yes, my wife’s lover! How could that be?’ ‘It happened because you married her,’ said an inward voice. ‘But in what respect am I to blame?’—‘You are to blame because you married her without loving her,’ continued the voice; ‘you deceived her, since you willingly blinded yourself.’ At this instant, the moment when he said with so much difficulty, ‘I love you,’ came back to his memory. ‘Yes, there was the trouble. I felt then that I had not the right to say it.’”
If any one wishes to be assured of the passage which I have just quoted, he must open “My Religion,” and there read the commentary on adultery, and the condemnation of divorce according to the books of Matthew (xix.), Mark (x.), Luke (xvi.), and Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. According to Tolstoï, marriage is indissoluble. Nothing, not even a wife’s unfaithfulness, authorizes a man to repudiate her; and, if he puts her away, he cannot marry another without himself committing the crime of adultery. We shall see this theory more clearly brought out in the romance of “Anna Karénina;” but even here Tolstoï makes his hero Bezúkhof conform to it. He will not allow him to claim the hand of another woman until the day when Elen’s unexpected death shall have broken the bond which he had imprudently allowed to be tied. He exalts this imprudence into a crime. He thinks that the chief culprit was he who did not fear to contract a loveless marriage, or to seek in this marriage mere gratification of pride and lust.
But Pierre acknowledges his fault to no purpose: his conscience will not speak as soon as his wrath is again stirred up by his wife’s impudent cynicism and truly mad provocations. Elen comes into her husband’s library in a rich and brilliant dishabille, with her calm and imposing air, “though on her slightly prominent forehead a deep line of fury was drawn.” She reproaches her husband for the scandal which he has caused, twits him as though he were an imbecile, and declares that the man of whom he was jealous was a thousand times his superior. She claims that she has the right to berate him; “for I can say up and down that a woman with such a husband as you who would not have a lover would be a rare exception, and I have none.” Pierre, as he listens, feels a moral discomfort, which torments him, the sting of physical pain.
“‘We had better part,’ he said, in a choking voice.
“‘Part? By all means, on condition that you give me enough of your fortune,’ replied Elen.
“Pierre leaped to his feet, and, losing control of himself, flew at her.
“‘I will kill you!’ he cried; and seizing a piece of marble from the table, he made a step towards Elen, brandishing it with a force which even startled himself.
“The countess’s face was frightful to see: she yelled like a wild beast, and fell back. Pierre felt all the fascination, all the intoxication, of fury. He threw the marble on the floor, breaking it into fragments, and advanced towards her with uplifted arms.
“‘Get out,’ he cried, in a voice of thunder, which sent a thrill of terror throughout the house. God knows what he would have done at that moment had Elen not fled.
“A week later Pierre left for Petersburg, having made over to his wife the full control of all his property in Russia proper, which constituted a good half of his fortune.”
In going from Moscow to Petersburg, Bezúkhof stops at Torzhok for relays, but horses are not to be had. He spends the night at the post-station. The bitterest reflections crowd upon his mind. “What is wrong? what is right? Whom must you love? whom must you hate? What is the end of life?” “Every thing within him and without seemed to him confused, uncertain, distasteful; but this very feeling of repugnance gave him an irritating sense of satisfaction.” At this moment a stranger arrives, an old man, whose “grave, intelligent, piercing gaze” strikes Pierre, and troubles him, in spite of its fascination. The new-comer knows Bezúkhof by sight, and has heard of his domestic grief. He expresses to Pierre his deep regret at this “misfortune.” Pierre, confused at the pity shown him, turns the conversation to the subject of a death’s-head ring which he notices on the stranger’s finger: he recognizes in it the mark of Free Masonry. The conversation takes up the moral views and the religious doctrine of those who belong to the order. The old man urges the young man to take a different view of life from that of looking at it with horror; not to escape from it, but to change it. “How have you spent your life? In orgies, in debauchery, in depravity, taking every thing from society, and giving nothing in return. How have you employed the fortune that was put into your hands? What have you done for your fellow-men? Have you thought of your tens of thousands of serfs? Have you ever helped them, morally or physically? No! Is it not true that you profited by their labor to lead a worthless life? That is what you have done. Have you striven to employ your abilities for the good of others? No, you have passed your life in idleness. Then you married. You undertook the responsibility of being a guide to a young woman. How did you acquit yourself? Instead of aiding her to find the path of truth, you cast her into an abyss of falsehood and misery. A man insulted you: you killed him. And you say that you don’t believe in God, that you look upon your life with horror. How could it be otherwise?”
In this programme of a new life sketched out by the old Free Mason, we recognize the one followed by Tolstoï himself, at a certain epoch of his life between the period of relentless struggle, of implacable egotism, and the period of absolute sacrifice, of humble renunciation. Pierre accordingly allows himself to be initiated into the order. I forbear to quote all the picturesque details of the ceremony. The novelist, using his rights, does not fail to throw a curious light on the mystic customs of the Russian aristocracy at the beginning of this century. What concerns us to note here, is the immediate benefit which Pierre Bezúkhof draws from this first transformation of his life. The simple prospect of devoting himself “to the regeneration of humanity” was sufficient to put meaning into a life which seemed to him impossible to travel. Unfortunately, in practice, his accomplishments fall below his dreams. He contents himself with giving his overseer orders concerning the emancipation of his serfs, the cessation of corporal punishment, the reasonable regulation of labor, the building of hospitals and schools. The overseer, who sees through his master’s naïveté, constantly plays it upon him, and imposes upon him in regard to the effect of the measures prescribed, but which he carefully refrains from undertaking. Pierre is not the man to descend to the details of the reform which he has vowed to carry out: he is, above all, not the man to make a bold stand against the difficulties of execution. At bottom, he would be very sorry if they had not been concealed from his sight. Accordingly he contents himself with a few apparent results, and is very careful not to look too closely into the lack which these appearances cover.
Besides, his new faith receives a terrible blow the day when he tries to make one of his friends, Prince Andréi Bolkonsky, share in his conviction. He encounters his bitter scepticism, which is the fruit of heredity (Andréi’s father having been a “grand seigneur,” of sharp temper and despotic soul), but it is also the result of the most painful collisions in life. Like Pierre Bezúkhof, Andréi Bolkonsky had been the husband of a woman whom he did not love. He always treated her like a brainless doll, and never showed any other feeling in her presence than lassitude. His only attitude towards her was that of disdain. This child, whom he did not have the patience to make into a helpmeet, died in child-birth. His young wife’s death has left in Andréi a sense of irremediable injustice, and he loves better to blame fate than himself; although at times he is seized with such a violent wish to repair his fault, that he is driven by it almost to express his belief in immortality. He hesitates to utter his assent to the dogma of the future life; but his wounded heart allows the exclamation to escape, “Oh, if it were so!”
To realize the distance traversed by Count Tolstoï since the time when he put this language into Bolkonsky’s mouth, we must look in “My Religion,” at the place where the writer—rather, let us say, the apostle—engages in such a vigorous combat with the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which he condemns as heresy. “Strange as it may seem, it is impossible to refrain from saying that the belief in a future life is a very low and degrading conception, founded on a confused notion of the resemblance between sleep and death, a notion common to all savage peoples. The Hebrew doctrine (and much more the Christian doctrine) was far above this conception.”
Prince Andréi Bolkonsky, as soon as he enters the stage, strikes us as one of the most distinguished examples of that Russian aristocracy to which Tolstoï belongs, and which he wished to make known to his readers in “War and Peace.” He has for his dominant features a clear, sharp, penetrating mind, and all the elegancies of his race, including a super-eminent pride. During the peace, and when his best qualities are not called into action, he wears some “affectation of indifference and ennui.” In time of war, and when “the weight of serious and real interests” will leave him no “leisure to consider the impression which he makes on others,” he will deserve all Kutuzof’s praise by his solidity, his desert, and his attachment to his duty. He will give offence by his disdain, but he will win over to his side the majority of the Russian officers; for his birth gives him a certain superiority over his chiefs, which they themselves tacitly acknowledge. Finally, he has a few rare friends, whom the distinction of his character has carried even to passionate admiration.
Andréi Bolkonsky’s faults and virtues are found, with more striking features, and exaggerated till they give an impression of humorous terribleness, in his father, the old proprietor, Nikolaï Bolkonsky. With his powdered wig, his withered hands, his arms of steel, his bushy, grizzled brows, under which shine his youthful and brilliant eyes; with his manias for mathematics, for turning wooden snuff-boxes, and for putting up buildings; with his brusque speech, his sardonic smile, his yellow teeth, his ill-shaven chin, his Tatar boots of soft leather, his arm-chair tainted with a musty odor of tobacco,—this despot is not to be forgotten. He teaches his daughter, the Princess Marya, the sciences. Before she goes into the room where her father is, to give him the morning greeting, the young woman, as she leaves the vestibule, “crossed herself, and prayed that courage would be given her.” On the day when his son Andréi comes to announce that he is going away to enter the service, and that he leaves in his father’s care his young wife, who is pregnant, and much troubled by a prediction which had been made to her after a dream, “the king of Prussia,” as the old man is nicknamed, replies only with the words,—
“‘Bad business, hey;’ and he smiled....
“‘What is bad business, father?’
“‘Your wife,’ replied the old man bluntly, accenting the word.
“‘I don’t understand you.’
“‘Well, my dear fellow, you can’t do any thing, you see; you can’t get unmarried. Don’t worry, ... I won’t tell anyone: but—you know it as well as I do—it’s the truth.’ He seized his son’s hand with his lean, bony fingers, and pressed it, while his piercing eyes seemed to look to the very bottom of his being. His son answered with a silent confession,—a sigh.”
The weight of this paternal dictatorship, which constantly crushes the Princess Marya, has an effect upon her which it is important to note. She is thrown into a sort of mysticism, somewhat like that which we have seen come over Tolstoï himself. She has frequent interviews with beggars, pilgrims, the poor in spirit; she listens to them, and gets instruction, not from their coarse anecdotes about the wonder-working Virgin whose cheeks sweat blood, but from their resignation at the torments of life. Thus she succeeds in forgetting her most bitter disappointments, or at least in bearing them with a steadfastness which no stoicism can approach. She also gets from her faith, her gentleness in judging those who come near her.
“Akh, Andréi,” she says to her brother, “what a treasure of a wife you have!—a real child, gay, animated. How I love her!” Andréi had taken a seat by his sister: he did not speak; an ironical smile played on his lips. She noticed it, and went on: “Her little weaknesses call for indulgence.... Who is there without some?... To understand every thing is to forgive.” And she forgives every thing, even the most cruel insult, even the wound inflicted on the most sensitive part of her sensitive nature,—of her loving heart. The handsome Anatoli Kuragin comes with his father, Prince Vasíli, to ask her hand in marriage, she being an heiress. While waiting to carry off this dowry with a high hand, he plays, in the Bolkonsky house, as everywhere else, his game of seduction; and he has rendezvous with the demoiselle de compagnie, a young and pretty French girl. Marya catches them accidentally. She refuses the marriage which she had eagerly anticipated. “I shall be called to some other good fortune. I shall be happy in devotion, and in making others happy.” She dreams of seeing the man whom she loved marry the one who has so shamefully insulted her. “I should be so glad to see her his wife: she is so sad, so lonely, so abandoned! How she must love him when he forgets her so! Who knows? Perhaps I should have done the same.”
Andréi goes to war; and Tolstoï takes us with him into a world of action, which he describes with rare power. We are dazzled at first by the brilliant art with which the novelist moves armies, carries out the combinations of tacticians, shows the troops with their passionate dash or their senseless terrors, represents their leaders with their hesitations or their unconscionable activity, but all alive, true, recognizable, from the humblest of the German officers to Napoleon the great captain. We are singularly struck by certain of his preferred methods; like that, for instance, of being true to fact in his painting of what is always idealized. Napoleon has vulgarities of character and expression, and the unexpected meeting with them gives us at first a shock of admiration. Instead of saying simply, “What realism!” we exclaim, “What reality!” Yet I do not hesitate to consider this portion of “War and Peace” as inferior to others. The historian in Tolstoï inspires me with a certain feeling of distrust: it seems to me that the painter of battles, with his first-class ability, here and there takes advantage of our fairness. There is a tinsel effect in his painting; the details are far too numerous, and there is not so much variety among them as one would think.
What is incomparable in the war part of the romance are the descriptions of military customs, the scenes of camp-life, the impressions of certain hours of day and night, the reminiscences of evening conversations, the effects of groups lighted up by the weird light of the bivouac, the heart-rending aspects of the battle-field or the hospital-wards. The marvellous beauty of all this wealth of feelings felt and experienced adds its glory to the more commonplace and less valuable woof of the historical narration. Turgénief, who understood this, noted somewhere or other this difference; but there are very few readers who can thus bethink themselves, and take account of their illusions.
Wounded at Austerlitz, and taken to the French hospital, Andréi sees Napoleon approach his bedside; that is to say, he sees the one who, in his eyes, represents the ideal, the superhuman man, the hero, the demigod. At death’s door, Andréi sees all things in a light which reduces them to their real proportions. To him all Napoleon’s acts, all his words, all the motives which make him act and speak, seem empty of interest. He turns from the sight of what is only human, and, with his eyes fixed solely on the medal which Marya hung around his neck on the day of his departure, he endeavors to believe “in that ideal heaven which alone promises him peace.”
Scarcely recovered from his wound, Andréi returns to his father’s home, which he reaches in time to be present at his wife’s confinement. There is here an admirable scene, which will be surpassed only by the birth-scene described in the romance of “Anna Karénina.” All that is dramatic, august, mysterious, in the opening flower of maternity has been expressed by Tolstoï in these two passages. That of “Anna Karénina” is famous. We feel nothing of the equivocal impressions and the lugubrious effects, which, under the pretext of realism, the author of “La Joie de Vivre” will put into a similar description. But a parallel between the realism of Tolstoï and the realism of Zola would carry us too far from our subject.
The impression left upon Andréi Bolkonsky by the death of his wife has in no small degree contributed to develop in him the tendency toward dissatisfaction with life. But one day a young girl comes into the circle of shadow, and he instantly allows her to usurp its place. The memory of a luminous vision is brought into the depths of his soul. All the apparently sleeping springs of affection in his nature are stirred up by the appearance of Natasha Rostova. Chance brings Andréi to the young girl’s paternal mansion: he falls in love with her, and with this new love begins the renewal of life.
The house of the Rostofs is the third of the seignorial homes which Tolstoï opens to us, and it is the one where it is the easiest thing to forget one’s self. Songs only are heard, merry laughter, the chatter of fresh voices. The head of the family, Count Rostof, is a great proprietor, ostentatious, but free from arrogance, and is carelessly hurrying to his ruin; but no one better than he understands the duties of hospitality. His wife is a sweet, good woman, adoring her family, and by her family adored. There are two sons in the house. The youngest, Petya, is a child at the beginning of the story; but he will be seen in the ranks of the Russian army before the end of the book. And Tolstoï, in describing his heroic death, will write a few pages, the beauty and noble sadness of which, without any sense of detriment, recall Virgil and the episode of Euryalus dying beside Nisus. The elder brother, Nikolaï Rostof, is the typical young noble, born for military life, for whom the profession of soldier is the first in the world, who is too sound in mind, too healthy in body, not to carry everywhere with him his good-humor and his off-hand manners. But he returns to camp as to a second home, and weeps with joy to see his comrades again; and he has no regret when he is once more in his tent, and he submits to the yoke and habits of military life with the same sensation of pleasure that a weary man feels when at last he has the chance to lie down and go to sleep. Tolstoï makes use of Nikolaï Rostof just as he does of Prince Andréi, in order to make us present with him during a portion of the deeds of war which he wishes to relate. Rostof’s impressions are not, however, like Bolkonsky’s: they recall pretty closely the memories noted in the “Military Sketches” of Sevastópol. It is evident that Tolstoï, who has very largely put himself into each of his characters, has reflected himself in this peculiar side in this one.
In the house of the Rostofs, there is a whole swarm of young girls,—the prudent Viéra, methodical and tiresome; the gentle Sonya, a poor relation, who is loved by the son, and who worships him, even to sacrifice: she will forego marriage with him, so that he may be rich and happy. But a luminous face, dazzling with its freshness, gayety, and grace, is that shown us in Natasha, Andréi Bolkonsky’s “bride.” Natasha is so beautiful, that no one can see her without loving her. She is willing to be loved without returning it. Happy in the effect caused by her beauty, she mistakes all her coquettish, maidenly caprices for honest, serious sentiments. She has imagined that she was in love with her brother Nikolaï’s friend Boris, then with Denisof, then with Prince Andréi, all in succession; but her passion has never yet been really awakened. It is waiting for the appearance of the last aspirant, the only one unworthy of being chosen; and then it bursts forth with frightful violence. Natasha meets Anatoli Kuragin: she yields to the fascination of his beauty, his boldness. He shamelessly addresses a few coarse, flattering words to her; and she is intoxicated by this unrefined incense more than by delicate homage. She forgets that she is plighted to Prince Andréi: she allows herself to listen to words of love. She loves; and she loves so passionately, that, without hesitation, she consents to all that her seducer has planned to lead her to irretrievable ruin. She is willing to elope. A providential chance prevents her departure. Pierre Bezúkhof arrives in time to reveal to the unfortunate young woman that Kuragin is married: he gives him a pretty rough experience of his giant hand, and compels Lovelace to return Natasha’s letters, and to pack off.
Natasha[52] falls ill with sorrow, shame, and remorse. The doctors cannot get the better of this moral suffering. Religion alone puts an end to it. A lady who lives in the country near the Rostofs comes to Moscow during Lent, and takes Natasha with her to perform their devotions. Each morning before daybreak they set out, and go to kneel before the Virgin, “the blackened painting of whom is lighted up by the candles and the first rays of the dawn.” Natasha prays with fervor, with humility. She feels that she is gradually becoming somewhat regenerated; and on the day when she is to receive the communion, she finds herself “at peace with herself, and reconciled to life.”
“‘Count,’ asked Natasha of Pierre, as she paused, ‘do I do wrong to sing?’ And she raised her eyes to his, and blushed.
“‘No. Wherein would lie the harm?... On the contrary. But why should you ask me?’
“‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ replied Natasha, speaking hurriedly. But it would grieve me to do any thing which might displease you. I saw,’ she went on, without noticing that Pierre was embarrassed, and reddening in his turn, ‘I saw his name in the order of the day.... Do you think that he will ever forgive me? Do you believe that he will always be angry with me? Do you?’
“‘I think,’ continued Pierre, ‘that he has nothing to forgive. If I were in his place’—And the same words of love and pity which he had spoken to her once before were on his tongue’s end, but Natasha did not give him time to finish.
“‘Akh! you? That is a very different thing,’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘I don’t know a better and more generous man than you. Such a man does not exist. If you had not helped me then and now, I do not know what would have become of me.’ Her eyes filled with tears, which she hid behind her music; and, turning around abruptly, she began to practice her solfeggi, and to walk up and down.”
Thus begins the last romance in Natasha’s life. She loves Pierre Bezúkhof, not with the fanciful love which she felt for Andréi, nor the mad passion which Kuragin inspired in her, but with a pure, moral affection, founded on esteem, on the similarity of thoughts and feelings. This union is the only one which Tolstoï wishes to realize for Bezúkhof, for it is the only kind which seems to him legitimate. But, before it can be accomplished, it must needs be that the man to whom Natasha had plighted her troth should be no longer between her and the one whom she is to marry. Accordingly we are brought to witness Andréi Bolkonsky’s death.
The French invasion of 1812 has roused all the powers of Russia. From the muzhik to the velmozh, every one has felt the impulse of self-sacrifice. The Rostofs, whose second son Petya desires to go as a hussar, are surprised in the midst of moving, by the arrival of wounded, whom it is impossible to transport farther. They have some of the furniture unloaded, and arrange a train of wagons. Among the mortally wounded whom they have thus received is Prince Andréi. He was struck by a bursting shell on the same day as Kuragin, and chance has so brought it about that the wounded man can behold on his bed of agony the man who stole Natasha’s heart from him. This is a most powerfully dramatic scene. It is not the only one offered by this part of the book. Natasha discovers, during the journey, that Prince Andréi is in one of the wagons. She makes her way out during the night, and comes to kneel by his bedside. Natasha and the Princess Marya meet at this death-bed. The analysis of the wounded man’s last feelings and sensations at the supreme moment is a marvel of divination: the ecstasy of the evening hours, the delirium of the moments of somnolence, are expressed with a power of imagination which makes one shudder.
Meantime, beside the Rostofs’ carriage walks a man of lofty stature, in laborer’s attire. It is Pierre Bezúkhof, who also has desired to find a chance to sacrifice himself. He did not join the army, like Andréi Bolkonsky, Nikolaï Rostof, Petya, and the others. Does he think, then, like the author of “My Religion,” that he has no right to kill a man, even though it were an enemy of his country? He stays in Moscow, with vague projects, which Fate, that mighty actor in the dramas of mankind, according to the author of “War and Peace,” prevents him from putting into execution. He is captured by the French, and endures a most trying nomad captivity. But he finds among his comrades in misfortune a poor soldier with wounded feet, and body devoured by vermin, and from him he learns the great secret of existence. Platon Karataïef, in spite of his pitiable exterior, personifies the moral and religious ideal, which, as we have already seen, Count Tolstoï definitely came to accept. As soon as the hero of “War and Peace,” Pierre Bezúkhof, has reached this limit of his development, the story has only to proceed of its own inertia to the conclusion. I feel that there is no necessity of delaying over the final scenes. The Princess Marya, whose father is now dead, marries Nikolaï Rostof, who had saved her life by quelling a revolt among the serfs of Luisuia Gorui, the Bolkonsky’s domain. Bezúkhof, at last a widower, is free to marry Natasha.