War and Peace
“Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be
deprived,” he thought as he lay in the semidarkness of the quiet hut,
gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. “A happiness
lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act
on man—a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving. Every man
can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was possible only
for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was the Son...?”
And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince Andrew
heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality) a
soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating
“piti-piti-piti,” and then “titi,” and then again “piti-piti-piti,” and
“ti-ti” once more. At the same time he felt that above his face, above
the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being erected out
of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered music.
He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it was difficult) so
that this airy structure should not collapse; but nevertheless it kept
collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound of whispered rhythmic
music—“it stretches, stretches, spreading out and stretching,” said
Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to this whispering and feeling
the sensation of this drawing out and the construction of this edifice
of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red halo round the candle, and
heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing of the fly that
flopped against his pillow and his face. Each time the fly touched his
face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not
destroy the structure, though it knocked against the very region of his
face where it was rising. But besides this there was something else of
importance. It was something white by the door—the statue of a sphinx,
which also oppressed him.
“But perhaps that’s my shirt on the table,” he thought, “and that’s my
legs, and that is the door, but why is it always stretching and drawing
itself out, and ‘piti-piti-piti’ and ‘ti-ti’ and ‘piti-piti-piti’...?
That’s enough, please leave off!” Prince Andrew painfully entreated
someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings again swam to the surface of
his mind with peculiar clearness and force.
“Yes—love,” he thought again quite clearly. “But not love which loves
for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason,
but the love which I—while dying—first experienced when I saw my enemy
and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very
essence of the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel
that bliss. To love one’s neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to love
everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to
love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved
by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I
loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?...
“When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can
destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people have
I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as I did
her.” And he vividly pictured to himself Natásha, not as he had done in
the past with nothing but her charms which gave him delight, but for
the first time picturing to himself her soul. And he understood her
feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now understood for the
first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, the cruelty of his
rupture with her. “If only it were possible for me to see her once more!
Just once, looking into those eyes to say...”
“Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!” flopped the fly....
And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a world of
reality and delirium in which something particular was happening. In
that world some structure was still being erected and did not fall,
something was still stretching out, and the candle with its red halo
was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay near the door; but
besides all this something creaked, there was a whiff of fresh air, and
a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the door. And that sphinx had
the pale face and shining eyes of the very Natásha of whom he had just
been thinking.
“Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is,” thought Prince Andrew,
trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face remained
before him with the force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew
wished to return to that former world of pure thought, but he could not,
and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft whispering voice
continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed him and stretched
out, and the strange face was before him. Prince Andrew collected all
his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a little, and
suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a dimness in his eyes, and
like a man plunged into water he lost consciousness. When he came to
himself, Natásha, that same living Natásha whom of all people he most
longed to love with this new pure divine love that had been revealed to
him, was kneeling before him. He realized that it was the real living
Natásha, and he was not surprised but quietly happy. Natásha, motionless
on her knees (she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes riveted on
him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the
lower part of it something quivered.
Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.
“You?” he said. “How fortunate!”
With a rapid but careful movement Natásha drew nearer to him on her
knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and began
kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.
“Forgive me!” she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.
“Forgive me!”
“I love you,” said Prince Andrew.
“Forgive...!”
“Forgive what?” he asked.
“Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!” faltered Natásha in a scarcely
audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more rapidly, just
touching it with her lips.
“I love you more, better than before,” said Prince Andrew, lifting her
face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.
Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
compassionately, and with joyous love. Natásha’s thin pale face, with
its swollen lips, was more than plain—it was dreadful. But Prince Andrew
did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were beautiful. They
heard the sound of voices behind them.
Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.
Timókhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had
long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his bare
body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.
“What’s this?” said the doctor, rising from his bed. “Please go away,
madam!”
At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her
daughter’s absence, knocked at the door.
Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natásha went out of the room
and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.
From that time, during all the rest of the Rostóvs’ journey, at every
halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natásha never left the
wounded Bolkónski, and the doctor had to admit that he had not expected
from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a
wounded man.
Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew die
in her daughter’s arms during the journey—as, judging by what the doctor
said, it seemed might easily happen—she could not oppose Natásha. Though
with the intimacy now established between the wounded man and Natásha
the thought occurred that should he recover their former engagement
would be renewed, no one—least of all Natásha and Prince Andrew—spoke of
this: the unsettled question of life and death, which hung not only over
Bolkónski but over all Russia, shut out all other considerations.
CHAPTER XXXIII
On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching, the
clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt uncomfortable on
his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness of something shameful
he had done the day before. That something shameful was his yesterday’s
conversation with Captain Ramballe.
It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of doors.
Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an engraved
stock which Gerásim had replaced on the writing table, he remembered
where he was and what lay before him that very day.
“Am I not too late?” he thought. “No, probably he won’t make his entry
into Moscow before noon.”
Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him, but
hastened to act.
After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to go out.
But it then occurred to him for the first time that he certainly could
not carry the weapon in his hand through the streets. It was difficult
to hide such a big pistol even under his wide coat. He could not
carry it unnoticed in his belt or under his arm. Besides, it had been
discharged, and he had not had time to reload it. “No matter, the dagger
will do,” he said to himself, though when planning his design he had
more than once come to the conclusion that the chief mistake made by the
student in 1809 had been to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as
his chief aim consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving
to himself that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he
could to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a
green sheath which he had bought at the Súkharev market with the pistol,
and hid it under his waistcoat.
Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his head,
Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or meeting
the captain, and passed out into the street.
The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much indifference the
evening before, had greatly increased during the night. Moscow was on
fire in several places. The buildings in Carriage Row, across the river,
in the Bazaar and the Povarskóy, as well as the barges on the Moskvá
River and the timber yards by the Dorogomílov Bridge, were all ablaze.
Pierre’s way led through side streets to the Povarskóy and from there
to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbát, where he had long before
decided that the deed should be done. The gates of most of the houses
were locked and the shutters up. The streets and lanes were deserted.
The air was full of smoke and the smell of burning. Now and then he met
Russians with anxious and timid faces, and Frenchmen with an air not of
the city but of the camp, walking in the middle of the streets. Both
the Russians and the French looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his
height and stoutness, and the strange morose look of suffering in his
face and whole figure, the Russians stared at Pierre because they could
not make out to what class he could belong. The French followed him with
astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the
other Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid no
attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who were
explaining something to some Russians who did not understand them,
stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.
Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel
standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the shout
was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man’s musket as
he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on the other side