Sónya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count listened with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.
Natásha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father and now at Pierre.
Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The countess shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn expression in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that the danger threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshín, with a sarcastic smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make fun of anything that gave him the opportunity: Sónya’s reading, any remark of the count’s, or even the manifesto itself should no better pretext present itself.
After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes the Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious nobility, Sónya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the attention that was being paid to her, read the last words:
“We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that Capital and in other parts of our realm for consultation, and for the direction of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy’s path and those freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the ruin he hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may Europe delivered from bondage glorify the name of Russia!”
“Yes, that’s it!” cried the count, opening his moist eyes and sniffing repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his nose; and he added, “Let the Emperor but say the word and we’ll sacrifice everything and begrudge nothing.”
Before Shinshín had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on the count’s patriotism, Natásha jumped up from her place and ran to her father.
“What a darling our Papa is!” she cried, kissing him, and she again looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned to her with her better spirits.
“There! Here’s a patriot for you!” said Shinshín.
“Not a patriot at all, but simply...” Natásha replied in an injured tone. “Everything seems funny to you, but this isn’t at all a joke....”