Natásha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother, her brother, Sónya, or Countess Márya in their efforts to console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning.

“It’s all nonsense, all rubbish⁠—those discussions which lead to nothing and all those idiotic societies!” Natásha declared of the very affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.

And she would go to the nursery to nurse Pétya, her only boy. No one else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she was conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his little nose. That creature said: “You are angry, you are jealous, you would like to pay him out, you are afraid⁠—but here am I! And I am he⁠ ⁠…” and that was unanswerable. It was more than true.