Epilogue Part 1 Chapter 7 (Chapter 341 overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: Nikolai's marriage. His mode of conducting his estate. His confidence in the muzhik. His rule of conduct. His world apart. Countess Mariya's jealous amazement. His theories.
Briggs: They live at Bald Hills, raising a family. The debts are paid off.

Translation: VII.

In the autumn of the 1814th year Nikolay was married to Princess Marya and with his wife, mother and Sonya crossed to living at Bald Mountains.

In three years he, not selling the estate of his wife, paid the remaining debts and, receiving a not large inheritance after the death of his cousins, paid duty to Pierre.

In another three years, the 1820th year, Nikolay so arranged his cash affairs that he bought a not large estate beside Bald Mountains and led to talks about the redemption of his father's Otradnoe, what formed his favorite dream.

Beginning as a host by need, he soon became so passionate to the farm that it made for him a beloved and almost exceptional occupation.

Nikolay was a master searched, not loving innovations, in particular the English, which entered then in fashion, laughed above theoretical essays about households, did not love plants, expensive productions, sowing expensive bread and was not at all occupied separately from one part of the economical. Before his eyes always was only one estate, but not somehow a separate part of him. In the estates again the chief subject was not nitrogen and not oxygen, located in the soil and the air, not a special plow and ground, but that main weapon, through mediation of an act of nitrogen, oxygen, ground, and plow, i.e. the worker peasant. When Nikolay took behind agriculture and began to delve into its various parts, the peasant especially attracted to himself his attention; the peasant presented to him as not only a weapon, but as purpose and judge. He first looked out at the peasant, trying to understand what he needed, what he considers bad and good, and only pretending that he orders and orders, in the same entities only taught the peasant receptions, speeches, and judgments about what is okay and what is bad. And only then, when he got the tastes and aspirations of the peasant, when he was taught to speak his speech and understand the secret meaning of his speech, when he felt himself akin with him, only then he began to boldly manage them, i.e. enforce by the relation of men that very position which the entrusted with him demanded. And the agriculture of Nikolay brought the most brilliant results.

Taking in control the estate, Nikolay right away, without mistakes, by some gift of insight appointed a manager and headman, choosing those very people that the men would have selected themselves, if they could choose, and his chiefs never changed. Before exploring the chemical properties of manure, before going into "debit" and "credit" (as he loved to mockingly speak), he found out the number of cattle in the peasants and increased this number by all possible means. The families of the peasants he supported in the most large sizes, not letting division. The lazy, depraved and weak he equally pursued and tried to cast out from society.

In sowing and harvesting the hay and bread he completely equally watched for his own and the peasants' fields. And in the rare hosts were early and well sown, removed from the fields and had as much income as in Nikolay’s.

With the servants he did not love to have affairs, calling them parasites and, as all said, loosened and spoiled them; when the need was to make some disposition about the courtyard, in particular when the need was to punish, he was in indecision and consulted with all in the house: only when it was possible to give to the soldiers instead of the peasant courtyard, he did this without the slightest hesitation. In all the same orders, concerning the peasants, he never felt the slightest doubt. All his dispositions, — he knew this, — would be approved by all against one or several.

He equally did not allow himself to bother or execute a human, only because of how he so wanted as to facilitate and to reward a human because of how in this consisted his personal wish. He would not be able to say in what consisted this measure of what must be and what must not be; but this measure was in his soul firmly and unwaveringly.

He often used to say with annoyance about some failure or disorder: "With our Russian people," and imagined to himself that he may not stand the peasants.

Yet he by all the forces of his soul loved these “our Russian people” and his everyday life only because he got and learned himself that there was only one way of the reception of the economical that brought good results.

Countess Marya was jealous of her husband’s love, and pitied that she could not participate; but she could not understand the joys and afflictions, delivered him by this separate, alien for her peace. She could not understand, from what he had been so especially lively and happy, when, getting up with the dawn and having spent all morning in the field or on the threshing floor, he returned to her tea from sowing, mowing or harvest. She did not understand that he was so delighted, telling with delight about the rich economic peasant Matvaya Ermishina, who all night with their family carried sheaves, and still at whose nothing was removed, but he now was standing at the bottom. She did not understand, from what he was so happy, passing from the window to the balcony, smiling under his mustache and winking, when in the drying up seedlings of the oats fell out the warm frequent rain, or from what, when at the mowing or harvesting a threatening cloud left quickly by the wind, he, red, sunburnt, in sweat, with the smell of wormwood and bitters in his hair, came from the threshing floor, happily rubbing his hands, speaking: well another day, and my peasants all will be on the threshing floor.

Still less could she understand, why he, with his kind heart, with his readiness to always warn her willingness, came almost to despair, when she delivered to him requests what some woman or peasant, applying to her, so that to free them from work, why he, the kind Nicolas, stubbornly refused her, angrily asking for her to not meddle in his business. She felt that he was in a special world, passionately loved by him, with some laws which she did not understand.

When she sometimes, trying to understand him, spoke to him about the merit consisting in that he makes good his subjects, he was angered and responded: "here there is really any: never in my head does it come; and here I don’t do it for their good. All this is poetry and womanish tales, — all this is nearly good. I need so that our children do not go by the world; I need to arrange our state while I am alive; here and all. But for this is needed order, needed austerity... here is what!" — he spoke, squeezing his sanguine fist. "And justice, of course," he added; "because of how if the peasant is hungry, and he has only a horse for himself, he will not work for me."

And it must be because of how Nikolay did not allow himself to think about how he made something for another, for virtue, — all that he did, was fruitful: his state quickly increased; neighboring men came to ask for him to buy them, and long after his death people kept a devout memory about his management. "He was a master... forward of the peasant, but then theirs. Well and slugs were not given. One word, — master!"

Time: fall of 1813 (1814 in Pevear and Volhonsky, Dunnigan, and Briggs.), four years, three years later, in 1820

Locations: Lysyya Gory
Mentioned: Otradnoe, English, Russian

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Nikolai and Marya have married, moving to Bald Hills with Sonya and fixes his financial situation within three years. He becomes interested in simple farming (rejecting English industrialism). He bonds with the peasants and "only pretended to give instructions and orders". He also has a disdain for house serfs.
Marya is separated from this life and cannot share in it.
"long after his death, the pious memory of his management was preserved among the people. "He was a master...The muzhiks' affairs first, and then his own. But he never went easy on us. In short--a master!"

Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):

Nikolai (also "Nicolas")

Princess Mariya (also "his wife" and "Countess Mariya")

Countess Rostova ("his mother")

Sonya

Pierre

Matvyei Yermishin ("Matvyey Ermishin" in Wiener. The name is dropped in Bell. "Matvey Yermishin" in Briggs and Edmonds. "Matvey Ermishin" in Garnett. "Matvei Ermishin" in Mandelker. "Matvei Yermishin" in Dunnigan. "Matthew Ermishin" in Maude.)

(a cousin who dies is mentioned, as are the peasants and serfs in general.)

Abridged Versions: Start of Chapter 3 in Bell. No break at the end.

Gibian: line break instead of chapter break.

Komroff: The digressions about farming and the peasants are shortened somewhat, as is Nikolai's legacy he leaves behind as a master.

Kropotkin: Chapter 3: A lot of the digressions about farming and the peasants are removed, keeping only the bare minimum of Nikolai's relationship with the peasants and then most of Maria's feelings about it. No break.

Simmons: Some of the details about Nicholas's running of the estate and his dealing with peasants is removed. No break.

Additional Notes: