War and Peace
“Oh, how good! How splendid!” said he to himself when a cleanly laid
table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down for
the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the French had
gone and that his wife was no more. “Oh, how good, how splendid!”
And by old habit he asked himself the question: “Well, and what then?
What am I going to do?” And he immediately gave himself the answer:
“Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!”
The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he had
continually sought to find—the aim of life—no longer existed for
him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared
temporarily—he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not
present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the
complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at
this time.
He could not see an aim, for he now had faith—not faith in any kind of
rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living, ever-manifest
God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself. That search for
an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity
he had learned not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his
nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In his
captivity he had learned that in Karatáev God was greater, more infinite
and unfathomable than in the Architect of the Universe recognized by the
Freemasons. He felt like a man who after straining his eyes to see into
the far distance finds what he sought at his very feet. All his life
he had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should have
merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.
In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable
infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and
had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had seen
only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had
equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space,
where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to
him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such
had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy
seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted
them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen
the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he
had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and
therefore—to see it and enjoy its contemplation—he naturally threw away
the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men’s heads, and
gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and
infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and
happy he became. That dreadful question, “What for?” which had formerly
destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that
question, “What for?” a simple answer was now always ready in his soul:
“Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls
from a man’s head.”
CHAPTER XIII
In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he
was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and seemed
occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something special
of his own. The difference between his former and present self was that
formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said to
him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly seeking to
distinguish something at a distance. At present he still forgot what was
said to him and still did not see what was before his eyes, but he now
looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what
was before him and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing
and hearing something quite different. Formerly he had appeared to be
a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been inclined to avoid
him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played round his lips, and
sympathy for others shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to
whether they were as contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his
presence.
Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he talked, and
seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in conversation and
knew how to listen so that people readily told him their most intimate
secrets.
The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly
hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him after
the old count’s death, now after staying a short time in Orël—where she
had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his ingratitude she
considered it her duty to nurse him—felt to her surprise and vexation
that she had become fond of him. Pierre did not in any way seek her
approval, he merely studied her with interest. Formerly she had felt
that he regarded her with indifference and irony, and so had shrunk into
herself as she did with others and had shown him only the combative side
of her nature; but now he seemed to be trying to understand the most
intimate places of her heart, and, mistrustfully at first but afterwards
gratefully, she let him see the hidden, kindly sides of her character.
The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more
successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and
showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre’s cunning consisted simply in
finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,
hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.
“Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence of
bad people but of people such as myself,” thought she.
His servants too—Terénty and Váska—in their own way noticed the change
that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had become much
“simpler.” Terénty, when he had helped him undress and wished him good
night, often lingered with his master’s boots in his hands and clothes
over his arm, to see whether he would not start a talk. And Pierre,
noticing that Terénty wanted a chat, generally kept him there.
“Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?” he would ask.
And Terénty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of
the old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and
talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre’s stories, and then would go
out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master and
affection for him.
The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though he
considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every moment
was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with Pierre
telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on the
characters of his patients in general, and especially of the ladies.
“It’s a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our
provincials,” he would say.
There were several prisoners from the French army in Orël, and the
doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.
This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make fun of
the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.
The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk
with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love,
and pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially
against Napoleon.
“If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight
such a nation,” he said to Pierre. “You, who have suffered so from the
French, do not even feel animosity toward them.”
Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely by
evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so doing.
During the last days of Pierre’s stay in Orël his old Masonic
acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in
1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress who
had a large estate in Orël province, and he occupied a temporary post in
the commissariat department in that town.
Hearing that Bezúkhov was in Orël, Willarski, though they had never been
intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship and intimacy
that people who meet in a desert generally express for one another.
Willarski felt dull in Orël and was pleased to meet a man of his own
circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.
But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged much
behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself, into
apathy and egotism.
“You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow,” he said.
But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had been
formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To Pierre as
he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to think that
he had been like that himself but a short time before.
Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family affairs,
his wife’s affairs, and his official duties. He regarded all these
occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that they were all
contemptible because their aim was the welfare of himself and his
family. Military, administrative, political, and Masonic interests
continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre, without trying to
change the other’s views and without condemning him, but with the quiet,
joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him, was interested in this
strange though very familiar phenomenon.
There was a new feature in Pierre’s relations with Willarski, with the
princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, which
gained for him the general good will. This was his acknowledgment of
the impossibility of changing a man’s convictions by words, and his
recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing
things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of
each individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre now became a
basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other
people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between
men’s opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased
him and drew from him an amused and gentle smile.
In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a center
of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary questions,
especially requests for money to which, as an extremely wealthy man,
he was very exposed, produced in him a state of hopeless agitation and
perplexity. “To give or not to give?” he had asked himself. “I have
it and he needs it. But someone else needs it still more. Who needs it
most? And perhaps they are both impostors?” In the old days he had been
unable to find a way out of all these surmises and had given to all
who asked as long as he had anything to give. Formerly he had been in a
similar state of perplexity with regard to every question concerning his
property, when one person advised one thing and another something else.
Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt or
perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a judge who
by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should not be done.
He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he felt
certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first time he
had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a colonel,
came to him and, after talking a great deal about his exploits,
concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre should give
him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children. Pierre
refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was afterwards
surprised how simple and easy had been what used to appear so