Book 7, Chapters 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

CHAPTER 9

Natasha wanders the house, hoping for Andrew to come back to her already. She is depressed and the fact that everything seems the same to her makes her even more unhappy.

*She claims that she needs Andrew to change her, but she has changed herself into an unhappy person. He had told her to find herself, but she only seems to find herself through him now.*

Important Quotes

Natasha: "Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be! And, worst of all, I am growing old—that's the thing! There won't then be in me what there is now."

Natasha:  "My God, my God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the same way!" thought Natásha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they were always the same."

CHAPTER 10

 Natasha, Sonya, Dimmler, and Nicholas all talk about their childhood, trying to forget their depressions. Natasha and Nicholas keep asking themselves if their memories really happened or if they're just dreams. Natasha claims that they were all angels in a past life and that's why they can remember things from so long ago. Later on, they all dress up in costumes and go to the old widow's house, Melyukov, to show her. On their way there, Nicholas sees the world around him anew, thinking that everything is fresh and magical in the moonlight.

Important Quotes

"So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not the sad memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones—those impressions of one's most distant past in which dreams and realities blend—and they laughed with quiet enjoyment."

Natasha: "Do you know," said Natásha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and Sónya, "that when one goes on and on recalling memories, one at last begins to remember what happened before one was in the world..."

 Nicholas: "If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas. "No, that can't be!"

CHAPTER 11

 They arrive at Pelageya Danilovna Melyukov's house where they put on a show for her in their costumes. She is thoroughly entertained and invites them to dine with her. At dinner, she tells them all of the scary barn behind her house. Sonya says that she wants to go to the barn and Nicholas follows, with a newfound love for her. She and Nicholas kiss in their costumes, both seeing some youthfulness and joy in each other that they hadn't noticed before.

Important Quotes

Nicholas: "Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the cloak that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and kissed her on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt cork."

CHAPTER 12

Nicholas decides that he is going to marry Sonya. He tells Natasha of this and she tells him that it's about time since he has been ignoring all her love. Everything seems magical to the two of them. Back home, Natasha still misses Andrew and looks into the foreseeing looking glass, but sees nothing. Sonya takes a look and doesn't see anything either, but lies and tells Natasha she has seen Andrew.

Important Quotes

"On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing and kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sónya's face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and his present Sónya from whom he had resolved never to be parted again."

Sonya:  "But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who can tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sónya's mind."

CHAPTER 13

Nicholas and his mother fight over his proposal to Sonya. She still wants him to marry rich (Julie) in order to save to family affairs and status. However, he refuses and remains true to Sonya. He soon goes back to his regiment before the marriage. Meanwhile, the countess becomes ill while Natasha, the count, and Sonya move to Moscow to sell their estate.

Important Quotes

"In all his encounters with his son, the count was always conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the family fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to marry an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sónya."

Natasha: "It hurt her to think that while she lived only in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new places and new people that interested him. The more interesting his letters were the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from giving her any comfort, seemed to her a wearisome and artificial obligation. She could not write, because she could not conceive the possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part of what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no importance herself."