Book 2 Part 5 Chapter 18 (Chapter 160 overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: Sonya tells Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha scolded. Natasha's conditions.
Briggs: Marya Dmitrieyevna is furious with Natasha. Count Ilya is not told.
Maude: Marya Dmitrievna reproaches Natasha. Count Ilya Rostov is kept in ignorance
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Marya Dmitrievna scolds Natasha.

Translation:

XVIII.

Marya Dmitrievna, finding the crying Sonya in the corridor, forced her to admit all. Intercepting the note of Natasha and reading it, Marya Dmitrievna with the note in hand entered to Natasha.

— Bastard, shameless, — she said to her. — I want to hear nothing! — Pushing away the surprised, but dry eyes of Natasha looking at her, she locked her in key and ordered the servant to let those people pass at the gate, in the now coming night, but not to release them, and the lackey was ordered to bring these people to herself, sitting in the living room, expecting kidnappers.

When Gavrilo came to report to Marya Dmitrievna, that the people who came ran away, she, frowning, got up and laid down her hands backwards, for long went by the rooms, pondering what there was for her to do. At the 12th hour of the night she, feeling her key in her pocket, went to the room of Natasha. Sonya, sobbing, sat in the corridor.

— Marya Dmitrievna, let me go to her for God! — she said. Marya Dmitrievna, not answering her, unlocked the door and entered. "Nasty, bad, — in my house, — bastard girl, only the father I pity!" thought Marya Dmitrievna, trying to quench her wrath. "How difficult, really I will command all to be silent and I will hide it from the count." Marya Dmitrievna with decisive steps entered into the room. Natasha lied on the couch, closing her head in her hands, and did not stir. She lied in this very position at which Marya Dmitrievna left her.

— Good, very good! — said Marya Dmitrievna. — In my house you appoint dates with lovers! Pretend that there is nothing. You listen when I speak with you. — Marya Dmitrievna touched her behind the arm. — You listen, when I speak. You disgraced yourself, as the last girl did herself. I would with you do that, and I pity your father. I will hide it. — Natasha did not change her situation, but only all of her body began to toss up from soundless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna looked around at Sonya and sat down on the couch beside Natasha.

— His happiness is that he from me is gone; yes I will find him, — she said in her rude voice; — Do you hear what I speak? — she lifted her large hand under the face of Natasha and turned her to herself. Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were surprised, seeing the face of Natasha. Her eyes were brilliant and dry, her lips tucked in, and her cheeks lowered.

— Leave... this... that me... I... die... — she spoke, with angry effort bursting out from Marya Dmitrievna and lying down in her former position.

— Natalya!.. — said Marya Dmitrievna. — I for you want good. You lie, well lie so, I will not touch you, and listen... I will not speak of how you are to blame. You yourself know. Well yes now your father comes tomorrow, what will I say to him? Ah?

Again the body of Natasha hesitated from sobs.

— Well he will recognize, well your brother, your fiance!

— In me is no groom, I refused, — screamed Natasha.

— All care, — continued Marya Dmitrievna. — Well they recognize, what are they so to leave? Because he, your father, I know him, because he, if to a duel calls him, is this okay? Ah?

— Ah, leave me, what for did you hinder all! What for? What for? Who requested you? — shouted Natasha, standing up on the couch and viciously looking at Marya Dmitrievna.

— And what did you want? — cried out again the getting hot Marya Dmitrievna. — Whether you are to be locked up? Well who hindered him from riding to the house? What for again are you, as a gypsy who is taken away?.. Well would he have taken you away, what do you think, he would not be found? Your father, brother, or fiance? But he is a bastard, a scoundrel, here is what!

— He is better than all of you, — cried out Natasha, raising. — If you would not have hindered... Ah, my God, what is this, what is this! Sonya, for what? Go away!.. — and she sobbed with such despair from how only people mourn with such grief when they feel themselves the cause. Marya Dmitrievna was again beginning to speak; but Natasha screamed: — "Go away, go away, you all hate and despise me!" — And again she threw on the sofa.

Marya Dmitrievna continued still a few times to counsel Natasha and inspire to her that all this needed to be hidden from the count, that no one would recognize anything, if only Natasha took it on herself to forget all and not show before by anyone that something happened. Natasha did not answer. She did not sob more, but with her were chills and a shiver. Marya Dmitrievna planted her pillow, covered her with two blankets and herself brought her fake flowers, but Natasha did not respond to her.

— Well let her sleep, — said Marya Dmitrievna, going away from the room, thinking that she was sleeping. Yet Natasha did not sleep and stopped with open eyes from her pale face watching before all of herself. All that night Natasha did not sleep, and did not cry, and did not talk with Sonya, a few times getting up and coming up to her.

On the next day at breakfast, as promised, Count Ilya Andreich had arrived from the Moscow region. He was very happy: the business with the buyer went okay and nothing now delayed him in Moscow and in the separation with the countess whom he missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and declared to him that Natasha was made very unhealthy yesterday, that she sent for a doctor, but that now she was better. Natasha on this morning did not exit from her room. With tightened cracked lips and dry stopped eyes, she sat in the window and anxiously peered at the passing by the street and hastily looked around at who entered into the room. She obviously was waiting for news about him, was waiting for he himself to come or write her.

When the count rose to her, she anxiously turned around at the sound of his male steps, and her face had accepted the former cold and even evil expression. She did not even go up to meet him.

— What is with you, my angel, sick? — asked the count.

Natasha kept silent.

— Yes, sick, — she answered.

At the anxious interrogations of the count about why she was so depressed and if something had not happened with her groom, she assured him that it was nothing, and requested him to not worry. Marya Dmitrievna confirmed to the count the assurances of Natasha of how nothing had happened. The count, judging by the imaginary disease, by the disappointment of his daughter, by the embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya Dmitrievna, clearly saw that in his absence something must have happened; but to him it was so fearful to think that something shameful happened with his beloved daughter, he so loved her fun calm that he avoided inquiries and tried to assure all of himself that nothing of particular was and was only grieved about that by the occasion of her ill health their departure to the village was postponed.

Time: see previous chapter, the following morning, at breakfast

Locations: Marya Dmitrievna's home
Mentioned: Count Rostov's suburban estate, Moscow, the country

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Now we get the Marya Dmitrievna perspective about how she found out and stopped the elopement. She berates Natasha and calls her a "hussy" but wants to keep the event from her father. They pretend Natasha is ill and this keeps them in the city.

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 *):

Marya Dmitrievna

Sonya

Natasha (also “daughter” and the many insulting names Marya Dmitrievna lays on her)

Gavrilo

Count Ilya Andreyitch (also “father”)

Nikolai Rostof (“brother”)

Prince Andrei (“betrothed”)

Anatol (only with pronouns)

Countess Rostova (“countess”)

(the dvornik is referenced again)

Abridged Versions: End of Chapter 21 in Bell.
Gibian: Chapter 18

Fuller: Chapter is preserved and followed by a break.

Komroff: Chapter is preserved. Line break.

Kropotkin: Chapter is preserved. End of Chapter 12.
Simmons: Chapter 18: the end of the chapter is cut out, which shortens Count Rostov's role in the chapter.

Additional Notes:

One reviewer compares the abduction/elopement attempt of Natasha to a scene in Pride and Prejudice. Interestingly, Pride and Prejudice was actually written near the time that War and Peace is set. While Austen for me doesn't quite have the heart or punch of Tolstoy novels,

there are definite, often missed, satirical aspects of her writing that I think can be drawn as parallels to Tolstoy (as well as Tolstoy being so influenced by the English novel

in general and Austen being such an archetype of the English novel.)

Frank/Garnett: "Family Happiness (1859), whose main female character experiences somewhat the same transition from perfervid youthful love to the obligations

and satisfactions of married domesticity as does Natasha in War and Peace."

Speirs: Page 41: “The reader is only apparently left alone with thoughts. Why will all this youthful gaiety be destroyed? Who is to blame?...The old count (Rostov)

has remained a child all his life...One evening Natasha, suffering from a sorrow she cannot really explain, though she attributes it to Andrew’s absence, wanders about the

house looking for Nikolay who, unlike the rather limited Sonya, is able to share in her perceptions..