“What are you crying about, mamma?” said Vera. “From all he writes, we ought to rejoice instead of crying.”

“What are you crying about, mamma?” said Vera. “From all he writes, we ought to rejoice instead of crying.”

This was perfectly true, but the count and the countess and Natasha all looked at her reproachfully. “And who is it that she takes after!” thought the countess.

Nikolushka’s letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were considered worthy of hearing it had to come in to the countess, who did not let it go out of her hands. The tutors went in, the nurses, Mitenka, and several acquaintances, and the countess read the letter every time with fresh enjoyment and every time she discovered from it new virtues in her Nikolushka. How strange, extraordinary, and joyful it was to her to think that her son—the little son, whose tiny limbs had faintly stirred within her twenty years ago, for whose sake she had so often quarrelled with the count, who would spoil him, the little son, who had first learnt to say grusha, and then had learnt to say baba—that that son was now in a foreign land, in strange surroundings, a manly warrior, alone without help or guidance, doing there his proper manly work. All the world-wide experience of ages, proving that children do imperceptibly from the cradle grow up into men, did not exist for the countess. The growth of her son had been for her at every stage of his growth just as extraordinary as though millions of millions of men had not grown up in the same way. Just as, twenty years before, she could not believe that the little creature that was lying somewhere under her heart, would one day cry and suck her breast and learn to talk, now she could not believe that the same little creature could be that strong, brave man, that paragon of sons and of men that, judging by this letter, he was now.

“What style, how charmingly he describes everything!” she said, reading over the descriptions in the letter. “And what soul! Of himself not a word … not a word! A great deal about a man called Denisov, though he was himself, I dare say, braver than any one. He doesn’t write a word about his sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! How he thinks of every one! No one forgotten. I always, always said, when he was no more than that high, I always used to say …”

For over a week they were hard at work preparing a letter to Nikolushka from all the household, writing out rough copies, copying out fair copies. With the watchful care of the countess, and the fussy solicitude of the count, all sorts of necessary things were got together, and money, too, for the equipment and the uniform of the young officer. Anna Mihalovna, practical woman, had succeeded in obtaining special patronage for herself and her son in the army, that even extended to their correspondence. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovitch, who was in command of the guards. The Rostovs assumed that “The Russian Guards Abroad,” was quite a sufficiently definite address, and that if a letter reached the grand duke in command of the guards, there was no reason why it should not reach the Pavlograd regiment, who were presumably somewhere in the same vicinity. And so it was decided to send off their letters and money by the special messenger of the grand duke to Boris, and Boris would have to forward them to Nikolushka. There were letters from the count, the countess, Petya, Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, a sum of six thousand roubles for his equipment, and various other things which the count was sending to his son.