The next day, the family of Natasha Rostova and the caravan following the black calèche left behind Polina’s family and continued east to an old monastery in Mytishchi. Polina promised to write Natasha one day, but she did not know when or how.

At Mytishchi Natasha soon learned that the black calèche that had moved so slowly held her former fiancé, the wounded Prince Andrei who had been hit by a French projectile at Borodino. Even though she knew her mother did not want this, Natasha went to Prince Andrei secretly in the dark, to the small room where he lay with Tikhon, his manservant, and a doctor.

Prince Andrei felt now only love and forgiveness for Natasha. When the pain in his body became severe, he gripped her hand tightly. He was near death, of this he was quite sure, and in his wounded, feverish state he felt despair to be reunited with Natasha only to die. Anger and regret that he had obeyed his father overtook him. And though he cared nothing for God, he tried to bargain with this stranger to heal him, and to bind him to Natasha and earthly things.

Natasha sat with Prince Andrei every day. Some days she knitted socks, which soothed him because it was unhurried and he felt he would not be abandoned. But she also sang to herself, each morning, the same solfeggios she had last practiced in Moscow. This ritual began to fill Prince Andrei’s soul with beauty and pleasure.