Free War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

know,” said the visitor.
    “They’ve been saying so a long while,” said the count. “They’ll say so again and again, and so it will remain. There’s friendship for you,
ma chère
!” he repeated. “He’s going into the hussars.”
    The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
    “It’s not from friendship at all,” answered Nikolay, flushing hotly, and denying it as though it were some disgraceful imputation. “Not friendship at all, but simply I feel drawn to the military service.”
    He looked round at his cousin and the young lady visitor; both looked at him with a smile of approval.
    “Schubert’s dining with us to-night, the colonel of the Pavologradskyregiment of hussars. He has been here on leave, and is taking him with him. There’s no help for it,” said the count, shrugging his shoulders and speaking playfully of what evidently was a source of much distress to him.
    “I’ve told you already, papa,” said his son, “that if you’re unwilling to let me go, I’ll stay. But I know I’m no good for anything except in the army. I’m not a diplomatist, or a government clerk. I’m not clever at disguising my feelings,” he said, glancing repeatedly with the coquetry of handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady.
    The kitten, her eyes riveted on him, seemed on the point of breaking into frolic, and showing her cat-like nature.
    “Well, well, it’s all right!” said the old count; “he always gets so hot. Bonaparte’s turned all their heads; they’re all dreaming of how he rose from a lieutenant to be an emperor. Well, and so may it turn out again, please God,” he added, not noticing the visitor’s sarcastic smile.
    While their elders began talking about Bonaparte, Julie, Madame Karagin’s daughter, turned to young Rostov.
    “What a pity you weren’t at the Arharovs’ on Thursday. I was so dull without you,” she said, giving him a tender smile. The youth, highly flattered, moved with a coquettish smile nearer her, and entered into a conversation apart with the smiling Julie, entirely unaware that his unconscious smile had dealt a jealous stab to the heart of Sonya, who was flushing crimson and assuming a forced smile. In the middle of his talk with Julie he glanced round at her. Sonya gave him an intensely furious look, and, hardly able to restrain her tears, though there was still a constrained smile on her lips, she got up and went out of the room. All Nikolay’s animation was gone. He waited for the first break in the conversation, and, with a face of distress, walked out of the room to look for Sonya.
    “How all the young things wear their hearts on their sleeves!” said Anna Mihalovna, pointing to Nikolay’s retreating figure. “
Cousinage, dangereux voisinage
,” she added.
    “Yes,” said the countess, when the sunshine that had come into the drawing-room with the young people had vanished. She was, as it were, replying to a question which no one had put to her, but which was always in her thoughts: “What miseries, what anxieties one has gone through for the happiness one has in them now! And even now one feels really more dread than joy over them. One’s always in terror! At this age particularly when there are so many dangers both for girls and boys.”
    “Everything depends on bringing up,” said the visitor.
    “Yes, you are right,” the countess went on. “So far I have been, thank God, my children’s friend and have enjoyed their full confidence,” said the countess, repeating the error of so many parents, who imagine their children have no secrets from them. “I know I shall always be first in my children’s confidence, and that Nikolay, if, with his impulsive character, he does get into mischief (boys will be boys) it won’t be like these Petersburg young gentlemen.”
    “Yes, they’re capital children, capital children,” assented the count, who always solved all perplexing questions by deciding that everything was capital. “Fancy