War and Peace: Original Version - Лев Толстой

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et excellente amie. Your letter of the 13th brought me great joy. You still love me, my poetic Julie. The separation, concerning which you speak so very badly, has clearly not had its usual effect on you. You complain of separation, but what then should I say, if I but dared – I, who am deprived of all those who are dear to me? Ah, if we did not have religion to console us, life would indeed be dismal. Why do you attribute such a strict view to me when you speak of your weakness for a young man? In that regard I am strict only with myself. I know myself sufficiently well to understand completely that, without making myself ridiculous, I cannot experience those feelings of love which seem so sweet to you. I understand these feelings in others and although, never having experienced them, I cannot approve, neither do I condemn them. It only seems to me that Christian love, love for one’s neighbour, love for one’s enemies, is more worthy, sweeter and finer than those feelings which can be inspired by the beautiful eyes of a young man in a poetic and loving young girl such as you.

      News of the death of Count Bezukhov reached us before your letter and my father was very affected by it. He said he was the penultimate representative of a great age, and that now it was his turn, but he would do everything in his power to ensure that his turn came as late as possible. May God preserve us from that misfortune.

      I cannot share your opinion of Pierre, whom I knew as a child. It seemed to me that he always had a beautiful heart, and that is the quality which I value most highly in people. As for his inheritance and the role that was played in it by Prince Vasily, it is all very sad for both of them. Ah, my dear friend, the words of our dear Saviour that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven – those words are terribly just. I pity Prince Vasily, and Pierre even more. That such a young man should be burdened with such a huge fortune – the number of temptations that he will have to endure! If I were asked what I desire above all else in the world, then I desire to be poorer than the poorest of beggars. I thank you a thousand times, my dear friend, for the book you have sent me, and which is creating such a stir in Moscow. However, since you tell me that among the many good things it contains there are some that the feeble human intellect cannot fathom, it seems to me superfluous to engage in incomprehensible reading, which for that very reason could not be of any benefit. I have never been able to understand the passion that certain individuals have for confusing their own thoughts by their attachment to mystical books which merely provoke doubts in their minds, and inflame their imaginations, lending them an exaggerated character entirely contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the Apostles and the Gospel. Let us not attempt to fathom the mystical content of these books, for how can we, pitiful sinners, know the terrible and sacred mysteries of Providence while we are still prisoners of the fleshly integument that erects an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us rather limit ourselves to the study of the great laws which our Heavenly Saviour left to us for our guidance here on earth, let us try to follow them and try to realise that the less we allow our intellect to roam at will, the more pleasing we shall be to God, who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him, and that the less we delve into that which He has preferred to conceal from us, the sooner He will grant us this revelation through his own divine reason.

      My father has said nothing to me about a bridegroom, he has said only that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince Vasily; as far as marriage plans involving myself are concerned, I must tell you, my dear, inestimable friend, that in my opinion marriage is a divine institution to which one should submit. No matter how hard it might be for me, if it should please the Almighty to impose on me the obligations of a wife and a mother, I shall endeavour to fulfil them as faithfully as I can, with no concern for the study of my own feelings regarding the one whom He shall give me for a husband.

      I have received a letter from my brother which notifies me of his arrival in Bleak Hills, together with his wife. This joy will be short-lived, since he is leaving us in order to take part in this war, into which we have been drawn, God only knows how or why. The echoes of war are not only heard where you are, at the centre of affairs and society, they are heard and make themselves painfully felt here too, among the agrarian labours and peace and quiet that townspeople usually imagine in the country. My father talks of nothing but campaigns and marches, of which I understand nothing, and two days ago, as I was taking my usual stroll along the village street, I saw a heart-rending scene. It was a party of recruits, enlisted from among our peasants, being sent to the army. If you could have seen the state of the mothers, wives and children of those who were leaving, and heard the sobbing and wailing on both sides. Well might one think that humanity has forgotten the laws of its Heavenly Saviour, who taught us love and forgiveness, and that it believes the greatest virtue lies in the art of killing others.

      Goodbye, my dear, kind friend. May our Heavenly Saviour and his most Holy Mother preserve and keep you under their holy and mighty protection.

      Marya.

      “Ah, you send your letter, princess, I have already sent mine. I wrote to my poor mother,” the ever-smiling Mademoiselle Bourienne said in her rapid and pleasant voice, burring her r’s and introducing an entirely different, frivolously cheerful and complacent world into the aura of bleak, introspective melancholy surrounding Princess Marya.

      “I must warn you, princess,” she added, lowering her voice, “that the prince has quarrelled with Mikhail Ivanovich.” Burring her r’s with especial vigour and listening to herself with pleasure, she said, “He is very much out of sorts, so gloomy. I warn you, you know …”

      “Oh, no, no,” replied Princess Marya. “I asked you never to tell me what mood my father is in. I do not permit myself to judge him, and I would not wish others to judge him either.”

      The princess glanced at the clock and, noticing that she had already missed five minutes of the time that she should have been using to play the clavichord, she set off with a frightened air to the sitting room. Between twelve and two o’clock, in accordance with the established daily routine, the prince rested and the princess played the clavichord.

      XXXIV

      The grey-haired valet was dozing in his chair, listening to the count snoring in the huge study. From behind closed doors at the far side of the house, came the sounds of difficult passages, repeated for the twentieth time, in a sonata by Dussek.

      At this moment a carriage and a britzka drove up to the porch and Prince Andrei got out of the carriage, helping his little wife out politely but coldly, as always, and letting her go ahead of him. Grey-haired Tikhon, wearing a wig, stuck his head out of the door of the footman’s room, announced in a whisper that the prince was resting and hastily closed the door. Tikhon knew that neither the arrival of the son of the house nor any other unusual events could be allowed to disrupt the daily routine. Prince Andrei clearly knew this quite as well as Tikhon; he looked at his watch, as if to check whether his father’s habits had changed since the last time he had seen him and, having ascertained that they had not, he addressed his wife.

      “He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go through to Princess Marya,” he said.

      The little princess had changed in the time that had elapsed. The bulge of her waist had become significantly larger, she bent further backwards now and had become extremely fat, but her eyes were still bright and her short, smiling lip with the faint moustache lifted just as merrily and endearingly when she spoke.

      “But this is a palace!” she said to her husband, looking around with the expression worn by people offering praise to the host at a ball.

      “Let’s go, come on, come on.”

      Looking around, she smiled at Tikhon and her husband and the footman showing them the way.

      “Is that Marie playing? Quiet, let us take her by surprise.”

      Prince Andrei followed her with a courteous, sad expression.

      “You have grown old, Tikhon,” he said as he walked past the old man, who kissed his hand, which he wiped with a fine lawn handkerchief.

      Just before the

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