War and Peace

rince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.

All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates—and constantly
changing from one thing to another had never accomplished—were carried
out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible difficulty.

He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre lacked,
and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.

On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and became
free agricultural laborers—this being one of the first examples of
the kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs’ compulsory labor was
commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for Boguchárovo
at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and writing to
the children of the peasants and household serfs.

Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father and his
son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he spent in
“Boguchárovo Cloister,” as his father called Prince Andrew’s
estate. Despite the indifference to the affairs of the world he had
expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went on, received
many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or his father had
visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life, these people lagged
behind himself—who never left the country—in knowledge of what was
happening in home and foreign affairs.

Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great variety of
books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a critical survey of
our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with drawing up a proposal for a
reform of the army rules and regulations.

In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazán estates which had
been inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.

Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the calèche looking at the new
grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of white
spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not thinking of
anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from side to side.

They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year before.
They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and green
fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near the bridge,
uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past strips of
stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there, and into a
birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the forest it was
almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with their sticky green
leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers and the first blades
of green grass were pushing up and lifting last year’s leaves. The
coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees scattered here and there
among the birches was an unpleasant reminder of winter. On entering the
forest the horses began to snort and sweated visibly.

Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter assented.
But apparently the coachman’s sympathy was not enough for Peter, and
he turned on the box toward his master.

“How pleasant it is, your excellency!” he said with a respectful
smile.

“What?”

“It’s pleasant, your excellency!”

“What is he talking about?” thought Prince Andrew. “Oh, the
spring, I suppose,” he thought as he turned round. “Yes, really
everything is green already.... How early! The birches and cherry and
alders too are coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah, here is
one oak!”

At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of the
birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and twice as
tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as great as a
man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its branches had been
broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge ungainly limbs sprawling
unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and fingers, it stood an aged,
stern, and scornful monster among the smiling birch trees. Only the
dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about in the forest, and this oak,
refused to yield to the charm of spring or notice either the spring or
the sunshine.

“Spring, love, happiness!” this oak seemed to say. “Are you not
weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the
same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look
at those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking out
my broken and barked fingers just where they have grown, whether from my
back or my sides: as they have grown so I stand, and I do not believe in
your hopes and your lies.”

As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times to
look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak,
too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid,
misshapen, and grim as ever.

“Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right,” thought Prince
Andrew. “Let others—the young—yield afresh to that fraud, but we
know life, our life is finished!”

A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully pleasant, rose
in his soul in connection with that tree. During this journey he, as
it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at his old conclusion,
restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for him to begin anything
anew—but that he must live out his life, content to do no harm, and
not disturbing himself or desiring anything.