le Général Rameau would occupy Prince Andréy’s study and amuse himself by looking through and reading his letters and papers. Mademoiselle Bourienne would do the honors of Boguchárovo for him. I should be given a small room as a favor, the soldiers would violate my father’s newly dug grave to steal his crosses and stars, they would tell me of their victories over the Russians, and would pretend to sympathize with my sorrow⁠ ⁠…” thought Princess Márya, not thinking her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father and her brother. For herself she did not care where she remained or what happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead father and of Prince Andréy. Involuntarily she thought their thoughts and felt their feelings. What they would have said and what they would have done she felt bound to say and do. She went into Prince Andréy’s study, trying to enter completely into his ideas, and considered her position.

The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her father’s death, all at once rose before her with a new, previously unknown force and took possession of her.