Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and made haste to satisfy all their expectations.

Though the most absentminded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not forgetting his mother- and brother-in-law’s commissions, nor the dress material for a present to Belóva, nor toys for his wife’s nephews. In the early days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the things he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natásha asked nothing for herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natásha’s censure it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added stinginess.