Book 2 Part 4 Chapter 12 (Chapter 141 Overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: The ride home. "Thou." Nikolai tells Natasha. Enchantment. Twelfth Night magic. Sonya sees a vision. Re-action.
Briggs: Nikolai and Sonya in love. Natasha and Sonya try their fate with mirrors.
Maude: The drive home. Natasha and Sonya try the future with looking-glasses

Translation:

XII.

When all went backwards from Pelageya Danilovna, Natasha, always seeing and noticing all, arranged so to accommodate Louisa Ivanovna and she sat down in the sleigh with Dimmler, but Sonya sat with Nikolay and the girls.

Nikolay, now not overtaking, smoothly rode in the back way, and all peered at this strange, lunar light on Sonya, seeking out in this all changing light, from below the eyebrows and mustaches that former and present Sonya, with whom he decided now to never part. He peered, and when he found everything the same and another and remembered this smell of jams, mingled with the feeling of a kiss, he with a full breast inhaled in himself the frosty air and, looking at the parting land and brilliant sky, he felt himself again in a magic kingdom.

— Sonya, are you okay? — he occasionally asked.

— Yes, — answered Sonya. — And you?

In the middle of the road Nikolay gave to hold for a little bit the horses to the coachman, in a minute running up to the sleigh of Natasha and began in diversion.

— Natasha, — he said to her in a whisper in French, — I know, I decided about Sonya.

— You told her? — asked Natasha, all suddenly coming out from joys.

— Ah, how you are strange with these mustaches and eyebrows. Natasha! Are you happy?

— I am so happy, so happy! I really was angry at you. I to you have not said, but you acted badly with her. This is such a heart, Nicolas, how I am happy! I happen to be nasty, but I was ashamed to be happy alone without Sonya, — continued Natasha. — Now I am so happy, well, run to her.

— No, wait, ah how you are funny! — said Nikolay, all peering at her, and in his sister also finding something new, extraordinary and charmingly tender, what he had before not seen in her. — Natasha, something magic. Ah?

— Yes, — she answered, — you did perfectly.

"If only I before saw her such as she is now, — thought Nikolay, — I would have for a long time asked what to do and would have done all that she would have ordered, and all would be okay."

— So you are happy, and I did okay?

— Ah, so okay! I recently with Mother quarreled for this. Mama said that she caught you. How can she speak this! I with Mama a little bit spat. And let no one say or think anything evil about her because of how in her is another good.

— So okay? — said Nikolay, another time looking out at the expression of the face of his sister, so to know, really whether this was, and, hiding his boots, he jumped off from the diversion and ran to his sleigh. All that same happy smile of a Circassian, with the mustache and brilliant eyes, watching from under the sable bonnet, sitting there, and this Circassian was Sonya, and this Sonya was for sure his future, happy and affectionate wife.

Having arrived home and told their mother about how they held time at Melyukova’s, the young ladies went to themselves. Undressed, yet not washing the cork mustaches, they long were sitting, talking about their happiness. They talked about how they will live married, how their husbands will be friendly and how they will be happy. At Natasha’s table were standing still from the evening prepared by Dunyasha mirrors.

— Only when will this be? I am afraid that never... this too would be okay! — said Natasha, getting up and coming up to the mirrors.

— Sit down, Natasha, maybe you will see him, — said Sonya. Natasha lit up candles and sat.

— Someone with a mustache I see, — said Natasha, who saw her face.

— No need to laugh, young lady, — said Dunyasha.

Natasha found with the help of Sonya and the maid the position of the mirror; her face had accepted a serious expression, and she fell silent. She for long sat, looking at the row of parting candles at the mirrors, assuming (contemplating with heard stories) that she will see a coffin, that she will see him, Prince Andrey, at this last, merging, vague square. Yet as she was ready to accept the slightest blur for the form of a human or a coffin, she saw nothing. She often began to blink and walked away from the mirrors.

— For what do others see, but I see nothing? — she said. — Well you sit down, Sonya; now you indispensably need to, — she said. — Only for me... I am so fearful now!

Sonya sat behind the mirror, arranged her position, and began to look.

— Here Sofia Alexandrovna indispensably sees, — whisperingly said Dunyasha: — but you all laugh.

Sonya heard these words, and heard how Natasha in whisper said:

— And I know that she will see; she and of the past year will see.

For three minutes all was silent. “Indispensable!" whispered Natasha and not finishing... Suddenly Sonya set aside that mirror, which she held, and closed her eyes with her hands.

— Ah, Natasha! — she said.

— Did you see? Did you see? What did you see? — cried out Natasha, supporting the mirror.

Sonya saw nothing, she only wanted to blink her eyes and get up, when she heard the voice of Natasha, saying "indispensable"... She did not want to deceive Dunyasha or Natasha, and was sitting heavily. She herself did not know how and owing to what was her escaped shout, when she closed her eyes with her hand.

— See him? — asked Natasha, grabbing her behind the arm.

— Yes. Wait... I... see him, — unwittingly said Sonya, still not knowing who understood Natasha under the word him: him — Nikolay or him — Andrey.

"Yet from what again I do not say, what I see? Because I see another again! And who again may catch me in what I see or have not seen?" flashed in the head of Sonya.

— Yes, I see him, — she said.

— How again? How again? Standing or lying?

— No, I see... that nothing was, suddenly I saw that he was lying.

— Andrey lying? Is he ill? — with scared stopped eyes looking at her friend, asked Natasha.

— No, the opposite, — the opposite, a fun face, and he turned around to me, — and in that moment as she said it, to her it mostly seemed that she saw what was said.

— Well but then, Sonya?...

— Here I do not examine, something blue and red...

— Sonya! When will he return? When will I see him! My God! How I am afraid for him and for myself, and for all I am fearful... — began talking Natasha, and not answering the words in consolation of Sonya, lied down in bed and long after this, as she put out the candle, with open eyes, still lied on the bed and watched the frosty moonlight through the frozen window.

Time: see previous chapter, three minutes

Locations: the Melyukovs, the Rostovs home
Mentioned: Circassian

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: The connection between Sonya and Nikolai bleeds over, leading to a conversation between Natasha and Nikolai about her. Again, they are happy.

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 *):

Pelagaya Danilovna

Natasha

Luiza Ivanovna

Dimmler

Sonya (also "Sofya Aleksandrovna", as in Dole. "Sonya Aleksandrovna" in Wiener. "Sofia Alexandrovna" in Bell. Just "Miss Sonya" in Briggs, Maude, and Edmonds.)

Nikolai

Zakhar (the coachman is referenced so I am betting this is him.)

Countess Rostova ("mamma")

Dunyasha

Prince Andrei

Abridged Versions: Line break instead of chapter break in Bell.
Gibian: Chapter 12.

Fuller: Entire chapter is cut.

Komroff: Entire chapter is cut.

Kropotkin: Entire chapter is cut.

Bromfield: Mostly the same, though slightly shorter
Simmons: Chapter 12: preserved.

Additional Notes: Just as childish (particularly in Pierre, Natasha, and Nikolay) pretending continues to pop up in the novel and is amplified in this part, the idea of magic is emphasized not only in this chapter, but in

entire part. Nikolay has the magical pretending on the way to Pelagaya's, Natasha and Nikolay visualize a magical kingdom on their way back from Uncle's, Natasha thinks about fortune telling and philosophizes

about the eternity of the human soul, and in this chapter we have Nikolay's ruminations about magic and Sonya's mirror trick. Tolstoy, an anti-superstitious and anti-metaphysical person, utilizing this magic is

somewhat surprising and doesn't really come up in much of Tolstoy's other works (save for some of his parables and short stories aimed towards children). Resurrection and ...Death.. contain no such passages,

but could be considered one of the elements (beyond the vastness in scope) that really separates War and Peace from his other works.

Garnett: "expecting (in accordance with the tales she had heard) at one minute to see a coffin, at the next to see him: This is an allusion to Gottfried Burger's Lenore (1773), Zhukovsky's "Svetlana," and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, each of which develops the balladic wandering motif of the deceased bridegroom come to claim his bride from beyond the grave."