It was not what he read in the letter that made him angry; what made him angry was that the life there, now foreign to him, could excite him. He closed his eyes, rubbed his forehead with his hand, as if driving away all concern for what he had read, and began listening to what was happening in the nursery. Suddenly he seemed to hear some strange noise behind the door. Fear came over him; he was afraid something had happened to the baby while he was reading the letter. He tiptoed to the door of the nursery and opened it. The moment he went in, he saw that the nanny was hiding something from him with a frightened look, and that Princess Marya was no longer by the crib.
’My friend,’ he heard behind him what sounded like the desperate whisper of Princess Marya. As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, a groundless fear came over him: it occurred to him that the baby had died. Everything he saw and heard seemed to him to confirm his fear. ‘It's all over,’ he thought, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Bewildered, he went over to the crib, certain that he would find it empty, that the nanny was hiding the dead baby.
He opened the curtain, and for a time his frightened, unfocused eyes could not find the baby. At last he saw him: the red-cheeked boy lay sprawled across the crib, his head lower than the pillow, smacking and moving his lips in his sleep, and breathing regularly. Prince Andrei, on seeing the boy, was as glad as if he had already lost him. He bent down and, as his sister had taught him, tested with his lips whether the baby had a fever. The tender forehead was moist; he touched his head with his hand—even the hair was wet: the baby had sweated so much. Not only had he not died, but it was obvious now that the crisis was past and that he was getting well. Prince Andrei wanted to snatch up, to squeeze, to clutch to his heart this helpless little being; he did not dare to do it. He stood over him, gazed at his head, his arms, his legs outlined under the blanket. He heard a rustling beside him, and some shadow appeared under the canopy of the crib. He did not turn and, gazing at the baby's face, kept listening to his regular breathing. The dark shadow was Princess Marya, who had come over to the crib with inaudible steps, raised the canopy, and lowered it behind her. Prince Andrei recognized her without turning to look, and reached his hand towards her. She pressed his hand.
‘He's been sweating,’ said Prince Andrei.
‘I was coming to tell you that.’ The baby stirred slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his forehead against the pillow. Prince Andrei looked at his sister. Princess Marya's luminous eyes, in the dim halflight of the canopy, glistened more than usual from the happy tears that welled up in them. Princess Marya leaned towards her brother and kissed him, catching slightly in the canopy of the crib. They shook their fingers at each other and stood a little longer in the dim light of the canopy, as if reluctant to part with that world in which the three of them were separated from everything on earth.”
- Leo Tolstoy, from “War and Peace'“