War and Peace

ext morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not
waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.

It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he drove
into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so strange and
memorable an impression on him. In the forest the harness bells sounded
yet more muffled than they had done six weeks before, for now all was
thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs dotted about in the forest
did not jar on the general beauty but, lending themselves to the mood
around, were delicately green with fluffy young shoots.

The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but only
a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling the road
and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in the shade,
the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and scarcely
swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the nightingales
trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now far away.

“Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed,” thought
Prince Andrew. “But where is it?” he again wondered, gazing at
the left side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with
admiration at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured,
spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and
slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled
fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in
evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were
no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old
veteran could have produced.

“Yes, it is the same oak,” thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he
was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal. All
the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory. Austerlitz
with the lofty heavens, his wife’s dead reproachful face, Pierre at
the ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night
itself and the moon, and... all this rushed suddenly to his mind.

“No, life is not over at thirty-one!” Prince Andrew suddenly decided
finally and decisively. “It is not enough for me to know what I have
in me—everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted to
fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may not be
lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it, but so that
it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live in harmony!”

On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that autumn
and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole series of
sensible and logical considerations showing it to be essential for him
to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the service, kept springing
up in his mind. He could not now understand how he could ever even have
doubted the necessity of taking an active share in life, just as a month
before he had not understood how the idea of leaving the quiet country
could ever enter his head. It now seemed clear to him that all his
experience of life must be senselessly wasted unless he applied it to
some kind of work and again played an active part in life. He did not
even remember how formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical
arguments, it had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if
he now, after the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe
in the possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness
or love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey
to Ryazán he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer
interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up,
went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he would
turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled à la
grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame. She
did not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked simply,
merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing his
arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling, as
he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as a
crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with Pierre, with
fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman’s beauty
and love. And if anyone came into his room at such moments he was
particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.

“My dear,” Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say,
“little Nicholas can’t go out today, it’s very cold.”

“If it were hot,” Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly
to his sister, “he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he
must wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That is
what follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child who
needs fresh air should remain at home,” he would add with extreme
logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical emotions that
stirred within him.

At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work dries
men up.