“It has grown brighter since you have come in,” said Natálya Nikoláevna. “O Lord, how white you are!”
She had been saying that each Saturday, for several decades, and each Saturday Pierre experienced bashfulness and delight, whenever he heard that. They seated themselves at the table; there was an odour of tea and of the pipe, and there were heard the voices of the parents, the children, and the servants, who received their cups in the same room. They recalled everything funny that had happened on the road, admired Sónya’s hairdressing, and laughed. Geographically they were all transferred a distance of five thousand versts, into an entirely different, strange milieu, but morally they were that evening still at home, just such as the peculiar, long, solitary family life had made them to be. It will not be so tomorrow. Peter Ivánovich seated himself near the samovar, and lighted his pipe. He was not in a cheerful mood.
“So here we are,” he said, “and I am glad that we shall not see anyone tonight; this is the last evening we shall pass with the family,” and he washed these words down with a large mouthful of tea.
“Why the last, Pierre?”
“Why? Because the eaglets have learned to fly, and they have to make their own nests, and from here they will fly each in a different direction—”
“What nonsense!” said Sónya, taking his glass from him, and smiling at him, as she smiled at everything. “The old nest is good enough!”
“The old nest is a sad nest; the old man did not know how to make it—he was caught in a cage, and in the cage he reared his young ones, and was