War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc TXT) 📕

are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked in.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, that’s it then! You know that there is a there and there is a Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is⁠—God.”

Prince Andréy did not reply. The carriage and horses had long since been taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The sun had sunk half below the horizon and an evening frost was starring the puddles near the ferry, but Pierre and Andréy, to the astonishment of the footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on the raft and talked.

“If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man’s highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there, in the Whole,” said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.

Prince Andréy stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening to Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of the sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness. Pierre became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the waves of the current beat softly against it below. Prince Andréy felt as if the sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre’s words, whispering:

“It is true, believe it.”

He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at Pierre’s face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his superior friend.

“Yes, if it only were so!” said Prince Andréy. “However, it is time to get on,” he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on that battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering, something that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and youthful, in his soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the customary conditions of his life, but he knew that this feeling which he did not know how to develop existed within him. His meeting with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince Andréy’s life. Though outwardly he continued to live in the same old way, inwardly he began a new life.

XIII

It was getting dusk when Prince Andréy and Pierre drove up to the front entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the house, Prince Andréy with a smile drew Pierre’s attention to a commotion going on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a wallet on her back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up. Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking round at the carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back porch.

“Those are Másha’s ‘God’s folk,’ ” said Prince Andréy. “They have mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter in which she disobeys him. He orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she receives them.”

“But what are ‘God’s folk’?” asked Pierre.

Prince Andréy had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was expected back soon.

The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any minute.

Prince Andréy led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always kept in perfect order and readiness for him in his father’s house; he himself went to the nursery.

“Let us go and see my sister,” he said to Pierre when he returned. “I have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her ‘God’s folk.’ It will serve her right, she will be confused, but you will see her ‘God’s folk.’ It’s really very curious.”

“What are ‘God’s folk’?” asked Pierre.

“Come, and you’ll see for yourself.”

Princess Márya really was disconcerted and red patches came on her face when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before the icon stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing a monk’s cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near them, in an armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek expression on her childlike face.

“André, pourquoi ne pas m’avoir prévenu?”52 said the princess, with mild reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her chickens.

“Charmée de vous voir. Je suis très contente de vous voir,”53 she said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child, and now his friendship with Andréy, his misfortune with his wife, and above all his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward him. She looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to say, “I like you very much, but please don’t laugh at my people.” After exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.

“Ah, and Ivánushka is here too!” said Prince Andréy, glancing with a smile at the young pilgrim.

“André!” said Princess Márya, imploringly. “Il faut que vous sachiez que c’est une femme,”54 said Prince Andréy to Pierre.

“André, au nom de Dieu!”55 Princess Márya repeated.

It was evident that Prince Andréy’s ironical tone toward the pilgrims and Princess Márya’s helpless attempts to protect them were their customary long-established relations on the matter.

“Mais, ma bonne amie,” said Prince Andréy, “vous devriez au contraire m’être reconnaissante de ce que j’explique à Pierre votre intimité avec ce jeune homme.”56

“Really?” said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and seriousness (for which Princess Márya was specially grateful to him) into Ivánushka’s face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about, looked round at them all with crafty eyes.

Princess Márya’s embarrassment on her people’s account was quite unnecessary.