Anatole Kuragin's attempted elopement with Natasha Rostova

Anatole Kuragin's attempted elopement with Natasha Rostova is the plot's sharpest collision between romantic illusion and practical predation. Presented by Anatole as a flight toward marriage, it is in fact an organized escape built on deception, money, transport, and a mock religious ceremony; its failure prevents Natasha from being carried away and brings the concealed affair into the open.

Causes and Preparation

Anatole Kuragin had recently moved into Fyodor Dolokhov's house, where Dolokhov arranged the abduction and prepared its logistics. Natasha had promised to come to Anatole at the back porch at ten that evening. Anatole was to place her in a troyka and drive her forty miles to Kamenka, where an unfrocked priest was waiting to perform a marriage ceremony. A relay of horses would then carry them toward the Warsaw highroad, after which they intended to go abroad by post horses.

The plan depended on an elaborate appearance of legitimacy rather than on Natasha's secure legal protection. Anatole possessed a passport and an order for post horses, while the financial arrangements included ten thousand rubles taken from his sister and another ten thousand borrowed with Dolokhov's assistance. Two witnesses for the mock marriage, Khvostikov and Makarin, waited at tea in Dolokhov's front room. In the study, surrounded by Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, Dolokhov counted the money and recorded the payments, including two thousand rubles for Khvostikov. The setting turns the supposed romance into a transaction managed through accounts, vehicles, witnesses, and escape routes.

The Attempted Flight

On the appointed night, Anatole and Dolokhov set out in a troyka driven by Captain Balaga, while Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet followed in another sleigh. Balaga drove violently through Moscow, shouting to clear the way. On Arbat Square the troyka struck against a carriage; something cracked, voices rose, and the horses continued along Arbat Street before turning through Podnovinski Boulevard and stopping near old Konyusheny Street.

The attempt ended at Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova's house before Natasha could be taken away. Dolokhov remained at the gate while a maidservant went to summon Natasha. Anatole entered the courtyard and ran toward the porch, but Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman, Gabriel, intercepted him and ordered him to come to his mistress. Anatole attempted to question him and retreat. When Dolokhov realized that the scheme had been discovered, he shouted for Anatole to come back, struggled with the porter who was trying to lock the gate, and finally pulled Anatole through the wicket. The two men escaped to the troyka, leaving the planned journey and marriage unrealized.

Intervention and Exposure

The plot was defeated because Sonya Rostova learned what was being arranged and resolved to protect Natasha. Marya Dmitrievna then found Sonya weeping in the corridor, compelled her to confess everything, intercepted the note intended for Natasha, and read it. Rather than allow the visitors to leave, she locked Natasha in her room, ordered the yard porter to admit the men who arrived that evening but not to let them out, and instructed the footman to bring them to her.

When Gabriel reported that the men had run away, Marya Dmitrievna understood that the danger had passed but that the scandal could not simply be ignored. She paced through the rooms, considering what to do, and decided to conceal the affair from Count Ilya Rostov in order to spare Natasha's father. Her anger was directed at Natasha's conduct, yet her response was also protective: she intended to control the damage rather than expose the family immediately.

Natasha's reaction reveals the emotional cost of the failed attempt. Marya Dmitrievna found her lying on the sofa with her head hidden in her hands, motionless except for noiseless, convulsive sobs. The intervention therefore produces a reversal: the adventure that Natasha may have imagined as an escape becomes an enclosed domestic crisis, while the older woman's authority replaces Anatole's promised freedom of movement.

Consequences and Significance

The attempted elopement changes the meaning of Anatole and Natasha's relationship. Anatole's preparations show that his pursuit is not an innocent courtship interrupted by social obstacles. He is willing to exploit Natasha's trust, use a defrocked priest for a false marriage, draw on borrowed and stolen money, and arrange a rapid escape abroad. The plan's elaborate machinery exposes its moral emptiness: the more carefully the escape is organized, the clearer it becomes that its legality and permanence are fraudulent.

The episode also demonstrates how agency operates through competing forms of movement and containment. Anatole's world is defined by troykas, relays, passports, post horses, and the open road; Sonya and Marya Dmitrievna counter it through listening, interception, locked doors, guarded gates, and household authority. The abduction fails not through a formal public judgment but through the alertness of those who recognize that Natasha's apparent choice has been engineered under conditions she does not fully understand.

Its deepest reversal is that a promised marriage leads not to a new life but to exposure, shame, and grief. The event leaves Natasha confined and sobbing, forces the adults around her to manage the consequences, and reveals Anatole's conduct as a reckless attempt to carry her beyond the reach of family and social scrutiny. The failed flight thus becomes a decisive break in the romantic illusion surrounding him and a turning point in Natasha's plot trajectory.