The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (25+ Works with active table of contents)

by Leo Tolstoy

  "Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me."

  Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.

  "Even divorce you?" said he.

  Helene laughed.

  Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest told her that it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him) plainly remarriage while the husband is alive.

  Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, she drove to her daughter's early one morning so as to find her alone.

  Having listened to her mother's objections, Helene smiled blandly and ironically.

  "But it says plainly: 'Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced...'" said the old princess.

  "Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rein. Dans ma position j'ai des devoirs,"* said Helene changing from Russian, in which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear, into French which suited it better.

  *"Oh, Mamma, don't talk nonsense! You don't understand anything. In my position I have obligations.

  "But, my dear...."

  "Oh, Mamma, how is it you don't understand that the Holy Father, who has the right to grant dispensations..."

  Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene came in to announce that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.

  "Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre lui, parce qu'il m' a manque parole."*

  *"No, tell him I don't wish to see him, I am furious with him for not keeping his word to me."

  "Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde,"* said a fair-haired young man with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.

  *"Countess, there is mercy for every sin."

  The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who had entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter and sidled out of the room.

  "Yes, she is right," thought the old princess, all her convictions dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. "She is right, but how is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so simple," she thought as she got into her carriage.

  By the beginning of August Helene's affairs were clearly defined and she wrote a letter to her husband--who, as she imagined, loved her very much--informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her having embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all the formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to him by the bearer of the letter.

  And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful keeping--Your friend Helene.

  This letter was brought to Pierre's house when he was on the field of Borodino.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having run down from Raevski's battery a second time, made his way through a gully to Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station, and seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still entangled in the crowds of soldiers.

  The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away quickly from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that day and return to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of life would he be able to understand himself and all he had seen and felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.

  Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along which he was going, still on all sides there was what there had been on the field of battle. There were still the same suffering, exhausted, and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers' overcoats, the same sounds of firing which, though distant now, still aroused terror, and besides this there were the foul air and the dust.

  Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road, Pierre sat down by the roadside.

  Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay leaning on his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved past him in the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon ball was flying toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he shuddered and sat up. He had no idea how long he had been there. In the middle of the night three soldiers, having brought some firewood, settled down near him and began lighting a fire.

  The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire to burn and placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some dried bread and put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy viands mingled with the smell of smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed. The three soldiers were eating and talking among themselves, taking no notice of him.

  "And who may you be?" one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: "If you want to eat we'll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest man."

  "I, I..." said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and better understood by them. "By rights I am a militia officer, but my men are not here. I came to the battle and have lost them."

  "There now!" said one of the soldiers.

  Another shook his head.

  "Would you like a little mash?" the first soldier asked, and handed Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.

  Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they called the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than any food he had ever tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it, helping himself to large spoonfuls and chewing one after another, his was lit up by the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence.

  "Where have you to go to? Tell us!" said one of them.

  "To Mozhaysk."

  "You're a gentleman, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  "And what's your name?"

  "Peter Kirilych."

  "Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we'll take you there."

  In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozhaysk.

  By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began ascending the steep hill into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on with the soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom of the hill and that he had already passed it. He would not soon have remembered this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he not halfway up the hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to look for him in the town and was returning to the inn. The groom recognized Pierre in the darkness by his white hat.

  "Your excellency!" he said. "Why, we were beginning to despair! How is it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?"

  "Oh, yes!" said Pierre.

  The soldiers stopped.

  "So you've found your folk?" said one of them. "Well, good-by, Peter Kirilych--isn't it?"

  "Good-by, Peter Kirilych!" Pierre heard the other voices repeat.

  "Good-by!" he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.

  "I ought to give them something!" he thought, and felt in his pocket. "No, better not!" said another, inner voice.

  There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied. Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all, lay down in his carriage.

  CHAPTER IX

  Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness of reality, he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of projectiles, groans and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a feeling of horror and dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he opened his eyes and lifted his head from under his cloak. All was tranquil in the yard. Only
someone's orderly passed through the gateway, splashing through the mud, and talked to the innkeeper. Above Pierre's head some pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof of the penthouse. The whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful smell of stable yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see the clear starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.

  "Thank God, there is no more of that!" he thought, covering up his head again. "Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I yielded to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time, to the end..." thought he.

  They, in Pierre's mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood out clearly and sharply from everyone else.

  "To be a soldier, just a soldier!" thought Pierre as he fell asleep, "to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them what they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could have run away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with Dolokhov." And the memory of the dinner at the English Club when he had challenged Dolokhov flashed through Pierre's mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at Torzhok. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the lodge presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at the English Club and someone near and dear to him sat at the end of the table. "Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor. But he died!" thought Pierre. "Yes, he died, and I did not know he was alive. How sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive again!" On one side of the table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski, Denisov, and others like them (in his dream the category to which these men belonged was as clearly defined in his mind as the category of those he termed they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dolokhov, shouting and singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his benefactor was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words was as weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind, firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they were kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him. Wishing to speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at that moment his legs grew cold and bare.

  He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his cloak had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his cloak Pierre opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs, posts, and yard, but now they were all bluish, lit up, and glittering with frost or dew.

  "It is dawn," thought Pierre. "But that's not what I want. I want to hear and understand my benefactor's words." Again he covered himself up with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was there. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.

  Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of that day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to think and express his thoughts like that when awake.

  "To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man's freedom to the law of God," the voice had said. "Simplicity is submission to the will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they are simple. They do not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden. Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing [Pierre went on thinking, or hearing, in his dream] is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all?" he asked himself. "No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!" he repeated to himself with inward rapture, feeling that these words and they alone expressed what he wanted to say and solved the question that tormented him.

  "Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness."

  "Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your excellency!" some voice was repeating. "We must harness, it is time to harness...."

  It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone straight into Pierre's face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump while carts were passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the carriage seat. "No, I don't want that, I don't want to see and understand that. I want to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream. One second more and I should have understood it all! But what am I to do? Harness, but how can I harness everything?" and Pierre felt with horror that the meaning of all he had seen and thought in the dream had been destroyed.

  The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an officer had come with news that the French were already near Mozhaysk and that our men were leaving it.

  Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him, went on foot through the town.

  The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses, and the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts that were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and blows could be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which had overtaken him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him to Moscow. On the way Pierre was told of the death of his brother-in-law Anatole and of that of Prince Andrew.

  CHAPTER X

  On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the gates of the city he was met by Count Rostopchin's adjutant.

  "We have been looking for you everywhere," said the adjutant. "The count wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at once on a very important matter."

  Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow commander in chief.

  Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to town from his summer villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom and reception room of his house were full of officials who had been summoned or had come for orders. Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and explained to him that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it would have to be surrendered. Though this news was being concealed from the inhabitants, the officials--the heads of the various government departments--knew that Moscow would soon be in the enemy's hands, just as Count Rostopchin himself knew it, and to escape personal responsibility they had all come to the governor to ask how they were to deal with their various departments.

  As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army came out of Rostopchin's private room.

  In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the courier made a despairing gesture with his hand and passed through the room.

  While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary eyes watched the various officials, old and young, military and civilian, who were there. They all seemed dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to a group of men, one of whom he knew. After greeting Pierre they continued their conversation.

  "If they're sent out and brought back again later on it will do no harm, but as things are now one can't answer for anything."

  "But you see what he writes..." said another, pointing to a printed sheet he held in his hand.

  "That's another matter. That's necessary for the people," said the first.

  "What is it?" asked Pierre.

  "Oh, it's a fresh broadsheet."

  Pierre took it and began reading.

  His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in order to join up with the troops moving toward him and has taken up
a strong position where the enemy will not soon attack him. Forty eight guns with ammunition have been sent him from here, and his Serene Highness says he will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is even ready to fight in the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that the law courts are closed; things have to be put in order, and we will deal with villains in our own way! When the time comes I shall want both town and peasant lads and will raise the cry a day or two beforehand, but they are not wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a three-pronged fork will be best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the Mother of God to the wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will have some water blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I, too, am well now: one of my eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout with both.