An analysis mingled with characteristic quotations might be able to
give some slight idea of the romance “Kazaki,” might give the reader
a hint of its interest, its color, and its flavor of originality. An
analysis of “War and Peace” can have no other aim, no other pretension,
than to point out Tolstoï’s design in this colossal work, and separate
the moralist’s tendencies from the story itself, which every one will
want to read, and read again, in detail.
In “War and Peace,” amid a multitude of thoroughly interesting figures,
there are three heroes who in some measure occupy the foreground, and
who stand out clearly against a background of great variety, carefully
studied, and peopled with living beings. These three characters are
Andréi Bolkonsky, Nikolaï Rostof, and Pierre Bezúkhof. The last
mentioned is not at first glance the one who is most attractive in
outward appearances; but it is the one whose moral nature is most
curious, the one in whom the author has expressed his own inmost
views, the one who, in his eyes, best illustrates the striking faults
and the fundamental virtues of a Russian nature. Bezúkhof’s qualities
are exactly those of the men of the Slav race: he is good, gentle,
loyal, compassionate; his faults are indolence, apathy, fickleness in
his tastes, incapability of following a given course, inaptitude in
realizing his own volitions.
Thus after having given his word not to attend a _soirée_ at Prince
Anatol Kuragin’s, Pierre Bezúkhof goes there, becomes intoxicated, then
with the aid of another gay spirit, Dolokhof, fastens a police-agent
to the back of a tame young bear, and throws them both into the river.
Dolokhof is degraded; Pierre escapes with a few months’ exile from the
capital. In the same way Bezúkhof is perfectly convinced that Elen
Kurágina’s beauty and the dazzling whiteness of her shoulders do not
hinder her from being dangerous on account of her coquetry; he has
heard mysterious rumors concerning her equivocal relations with his
brother, the last of the debauchees; he is perfectly convinced that it
would be foolish to the last degree to marry this admirable character,
and that the best way of not committing this folly is to give up seeing
her charming face, her seductive snowy complexion. Unhappily for him,
her marble shoulders, neck, and bosom, one evening, came close to his
poor near-sighted eyes, and all “is so near to his lips that he had
scarcely to bend a hair’s breadth to impress them upon it.” Pierre
Bezúkhof does not depart more: he allows himself to be married, partly
through infatuation, partly through feebleness.
The marriage almost from the very first turns out ill. The rake
Dolokhof has returned, and never leaves Bezúkhof’s house. Pierre long
puts up with a situation, the meaning of which he does not suspect:
the inevitable anonymous letter comes to open his eyes. At first he
refuses to believe what he has been told; but at the club where he
meets Dolokhof, it is sufficient for him to find himself face to face
with his wife’s lover, for his jealousy to burst forth with a flash
like a discharge of electricity. The first pretext gives Pierre cause
for a quarrel, and a duel follows. Dolokhof is a crack marksman: he has
no sort of feebleness. Pierre Bezúkhof is near-sighted, awkward: he has
never fired a pistol in his life. But, as if by judgment of God, it is
Dolokhof who falls.
Returning home, Pierre Bezúkhof tries vainly to sleep, so as to forget
all that has just passed. He cannot close his eyes. “He got up, and
began to pace up and down the room with uneven steps. Now he thought
of the early days of their marriage, of her beautiful shoulders, of
her languishing, passionate gaze; now he pictured Dolokhof standing by
her, handsome, impudent, with his diabolic smile, just as he had seen
him at the club dinner; now he saw him pale, shivering, vanquished, and
sinking on the snow.
“‘And, after all, I have killed her lover,’ he said to himself; ‘yes,
my wife’s lover! How could that be?’ ‘It happened because you married
her,’ said an inward voice. ‘But in what respect am I to blame?’--‘You
are to blame because you married her without loving her,’ continued
the voice; ‘you deceived her, since you willingly blinded yourself.’ At
this instant, the moment when he said with so much difficulty, ‘I love
you,’ came back to his memory. ‘Yes, there was the trouble. I felt then
that I had not the right to say it.’”
If any one wishes to be assured of the passage which I have just
quoted, he must open “My Religion,” and there read the commentary on
adultery, and the condemnation of divorce according to the books of
Matthew (xix.), Mark (x.), Luke (xvi.), and Paul’s First Epistle to the
Corinthians. According to Tolstoï, marriage is indissoluble. Nothing,
not even a wife’s unfaithfulness, authorizes a man to repudiate her;
and, if he puts her away, he cannot marry another without himself
committing the crime of adultery. We shall see this theory more clearly
brought out in the romance of “Anna Karénina;” but even here Tolstoï
makes his hero Bezúkhof conform to it. He will not allow him to claim
the hand of another woman until the day when Elen’s unexpected death
shall have broken the bond which he had imprudently allowed to be tied.
He exalts this imprudence into a crime. He thinks that the chief
culprit was he who did not fear to contract a loveless marriage, or to
seek in this marriage mere gratification of pride and lust.
But Pierre acknowledges his fault to no purpose: his conscience will
not speak as soon as his wrath is again stirred up by his wife’s
impudent cynicism and truly mad provocations. Elen comes into her
husband’s library in a rich and brilliant dishabille, with her calm and
imposing air, “though on her slightly prominent forehead a deep line
of fury was drawn.” She reproaches her husband for the scandal which
he has caused, twits him as though he were an imbecile, and declares
that the man of whom he was jealous was a thousand times his superior.
She claims that she has the right to berate him; “for I can say up and
down that a woman with such a husband as you who would not have a lover
would be a rare exception, and I have none.” Pierre, as he listens,
feels a moral discomfort, which torments him, the sting of physical
pain.
“‘We had better part,’ he said, in a choking voice.
“‘Part? By all means, on condition that you give me enough of your
fortune,’ replied Elen.
“Pierre leaped to his feet, and, losing control of himself, flew at her.
“‘I will kill you!’ he cried; and seizing a piece of marble from the
table, he made a step towards Elen, brandishing it with a force which
even startled himself.
“The countess’s face was frightful to see: she yelled like a wild
beast, and fell back. Pierre felt all the fascination, all the
intoxication, of fury. He threw the marble on the floor, breaking it
into fragments, and advanced towards her with uplifted arms.
“‘Get out,’ he cried, in a voice of thunder, which sent a thrill of
terror throughout the house. God knows what he would have done at that
moment had Elen not fled.
“A week later Pierre left for Petersburg, having made over to his
wife the full control of all his property in Russia proper, which
constituted a good half of his fortune.”
In going from Moscow to Petersburg, Bezúkhof stops at Torzhok for
relays, but horses are not to be had. He spends the night at the
post-station. The bitterest reflections crowd upon his mind. “What is
wrong? what is right? Whom must you love? whom must you hate? What is
the end of life?” “Every thing within him and without seemed to him
confused, uncertain, distasteful; but this very feeling of repugnance
gave him an irritating sense of satisfaction.” At this moment a
stranger arrives, an old man, whose “grave, intelligent, piercing gaze”
strikes Pierre, and troubles him, in spite of its fascination. The
new-comer knows Bezúkhof by sight, and has heard of his domestic grief.
He expresses to Pierre his deep regret at this “misfortune.” Pierre,
confused at the pity shown him, turns the conversation to the subject
of a death’s-head ring which he notices on the stranger’s finger: he
recognizes in it the mark of Free Masonry. The conversation takes up
the moral views and the religious doctrine of those who belong to the
order. The old man urges the young man to take a different view of life
from that of looking at it with horror; not to escape from it, but to
change it. “How have you spent your life? In orgies, in debauchery,
in depravity, taking every thing from society, and giving nothing
in return. How have you employed the fortune that was put into your
hands? What have you done for your fellow-men? Have you thought of
your tens of thousands of serfs? Have you ever helped them, morally
or physically? No! Is it not true that you profited by their labor to
lead a worthless life? That is what you have done. Have you striven to
employ your abilities for the good of others? No, you have passed your
life in idleness. Then you married. You undertook the responsibility of
being a guide to a young woman. How did you acquit yourself? Instead
of aiding her to find the path of truth, you cast her into an abyss
of falsehood and misery. A man insulted you: you killed him. And you
say that you don’t believe in God, that you look upon your life with
horror. How could it be otherwise?”
In this programme of a new life sketched out by the old Free Mason,
we recognize the one followed by Tolstoï himself, at a certain epoch
of his life between the period of relentless struggle, of implacable
egotism, and the period of absolute sacrifice, of humble renunciation.
Pierre accordingly allows himself to be initiated into the order. I
forbear to quote all the picturesque details of the ceremony. The
novelist, using his rights, does not fail to throw a curious light
on the mystic customs of the Russian aristocracy at the beginning of
this century. What concerns us to note here, is the immediate benefit
which Pierre Bezúkhof draws from this first transformation of his
life. The simple prospect of devoting himself “to the regeneration of
humanity” was sufficient to put meaning into a life which seemed to him
impossible to travel. Unfortunately, in practice, his accomplishments
fall below his dreams. He contents himself with giving his overseer
orders concerning the emancipation of his serfs, the cessation of
corporal punishment, the reasonable regulation of labor, the building
of hospitals and schools. The overseer, who sees through his master’s
_naïveté_, constantly plays it upon him, and imposes upon him in regard
to the effect of the measures prescribed, but which he carefully
refrains from undertaking. Pierre is not the man to descend to the
details of the reform which he has vowed to carry out: he is, above
all, not the man to make a bold stand against the difficulties of
execution. At bottom, he would be very sorry if they had not been
concealed from his sight. Accordingly he contents himself with a few
apparent results, and is very careful not to look too closely into the
lack which these appearances cover.
Besides, his new faith receives a terrible blow the day when he tries
to make one of his friends, Prince Andréi Bolkonsky, share in his
conviction. He encounters his bitter scepticism, which is the fruit
of heredity (Andréi’s father having been a “grand seigneur,” of sharp
temper and despotic soul), but it is also the result of the most
painful collisions in life. Like Pierre Bezúkhof, Andréi Bolkonsky had
been the husband of a woman whom he did not love. He always treated
her like a brainless doll, and never showed any other feeling in her
presence than lassitude. His only attitude towards her was that of
disdain. This child, whom he did not have the patience to make into
a helpmeet, died in child-birth. His young wife’s death has left in
Andréi a sense of irremediable injustice, and he loves better to blame
fate than himself; although at times he is seized with such a violent
wish to repair his fault, that he is driven by it almost to express his
belief in immortality. He hesitates to utter his assent to the dogma
of the future life; but his wounded heart allows the exclamation to
escape, “Oh, if it were so!”
To realize the distance traversed by Count Tolstoï since the time
when he put this language into Bolkonsky’s mouth, we must look in “My
Religion,” at the place where the writer--rather, let us say, the
apostle--engages in such a vigorous combat with the doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead, which he condemns as heresy. “Strange as it
may seem, it is impossible to refrain from saying that the belief in
a future life is a very low and degrading conception, founded on a
confused notion of the resemblance between sleep and death, a notion
common to all savage peoples. The Hebrew doctrine (and much more the
Christian doctrine) was far above this conception.”
Prince Andréi Bolkonsky, as soon as he enters the stage, strikes us as
one of the most distinguished examples of that Russian aristocracy
to which Tolstoï belongs, and which he wished to make known to his
readers in “War and Peace.” He has for his dominant features a clear,
sharp, penetrating mind, and all the elegancies of his race, including
a super-eminent pride. During the peace, and when his best qualities
are not called into action, he wears some “affectation of indifference
and _ennui_.” In time of war, and when “the weight of serious and
real interests” will leave him no “leisure to consider the impression
which he makes on others,” he will deserve all Kutuzof’s praise by his
solidity, his desert, and his attachment to his duty. He will give
offence by his disdain, but he will win over to his side the majority
of the Russian officers; for his birth gives him a certain superiority
over his chiefs, which they themselves tacitly acknowledge. Finally,
he has a few rare friends, whom the distinction of his character has
carried even to passionate admiration.
Andréi Bolkonsky’s faults and virtues are found, with more striking
features, and exaggerated till they give an impression of humorous
terribleness, in his father, the old proprietor, Nikolaï Bolkonsky.
With his powdered wig, his withered hands, his arms of steel, his
bushy, grizzled brows, under which shine his youthful and brilliant
eyes; with his manias for mathematics, for turning wooden snuff-boxes,
and for putting up buildings; with his brusque speech, his sardonic
smile, his yellow teeth, his ill-shaven chin, his Tatar boots of soft
leather, his arm-chair tainted with a musty odor of tobacco,--this
despot is not to be forgotten. He teaches his daughter, the Princess
Marya, the sciences. Before she goes into the room where her father is,
to give him the morning greeting, the young woman, as she leaves the
vestibule, “crossed herself, and prayed that courage would be given
her.” On the day when his son Andréi comes to announce that he is going
away to enter the service, and that he leaves in his father’s care his
young wife, who is pregnant, and much troubled by a prediction which
had been made to her after a dream, “the king of Prussia,” as the old
man is nicknamed, replies only with the words,--
“‘Bad business, hey;’ and he smiled....
“‘What is bad business, father?’
“‘Your wife,’ replied the old man bluntly, accenting the word.
“‘I don’t understand you.’
“‘Well, my dear fellow, you can’t do any thing, you see; you can’t
get unmarried. Don’t worry, ... I won’t tell anyone: but--you know it
as well as I do--it’s the truth.’ He seized his son’s hand with his
lean, bony fingers, and pressed it, while his piercing eyes seemed to
look to the very bottom of his being. His son answered with a silent
confession,--a sigh.”
The weight of this paternal dictatorship, which constantly crushes the
Princess Marya, has an effect upon her which it is important to note.
She is thrown into a sort of mysticism, somewhat like that which we
have seen come over Tolstoï himself. She has frequent interviews with
beggars, pilgrims, the poor in spirit; she listens to them, and gets
instruction, not from their coarse anecdotes about the wonder-working
Virgin whose cheeks sweat blood, but from their resignation at the
torments of life. Thus she succeeds in forgetting her most bitter
disappointments, or at least in bearing them with a steadfastness which
no stoicism can approach. She also gets from her faith, her gentleness
in judging those who come near her.
“_Akh_, Andréi,” she says to her brother, “what a treasure of a wife
you have!--a real child, gay, animated. How I love her!” Andréi had
taken a seat by his sister: he did not speak; an ironical smile played
on his lips. She noticed it, and went on: “Her little weaknesses call
for indulgence.... Who is there without some?... To understand every
thing is to forgive.” And she forgives every thing, even the most cruel
insult, even the wound inflicted on the most sensitive part of her
sensitive nature,--of her loving heart. The handsome Anatoli Kuragin
comes with his father, Prince Vasíli, to ask her hand in marriage, she
being an heiress. While waiting to carry off this dowry with a high
hand, he plays, in the Bolkonsky house, as everywhere else, his game of
seduction; and he has rendezvous with the _demoiselle de compagnie_,
a young and pretty French girl. Marya catches them accidentally. She
refuses the marriage which she had eagerly anticipated. “I shall be
called to some other good fortune. I shall be happy in devotion, and
in making others happy.” She dreams of seeing the man whom she loved
marry the one who has so shamefully insulted her. “I should be so glad
to see her his wife: she is so sad, so lonely, so abandoned! How she
must love him when he forgets her so! Who knows? Perhaps I should have
done the same.”
Andréi goes to war; and Tolstoï takes us with him into a world of
action, which he describes with rare power. We are dazzled at first by
the brilliant art with which the novelist moves armies, carries out
the combinations of tacticians, shows the troops with their passionate
dash or their senseless terrors, represents their leaders with their
hesitations or their unconscionable activity, but all alive, true,
recognizable, from the humblest of the German officers to Napoleon the
great captain. We are singularly struck by certain of his preferred
methods; like that, for instance, of being true to fact in his painting
of what is always idealized. Napoleon has vulgarities of character and
expression, and the unexpected meeting with them gives us at first a
shock of admiration. Instead of saying simply, “What realism!” we
exclaim, “What reality!” Yet I do not hesitate to consider this portion
of “War and Peace” as inferior to others. The historian in Tolstoï
inspires me with a certain feeling of distrust: it seems to me that the
painter of battles, with his first-class ability, here and there takes
advantage of our fairness. There is a tinsel effect in his painting;
the details are far too numerous, and there is not so much variety
among them as one would think.
What is incomparable in the war part of the romance are the
descriptions of military customs, the scenes of camp-life, the
impressions of certain hours of day and night, the reminiscences of
evening conversations, the effects of groups lighted up by the weird
light of the bivouac, the heart-rending aspects of the battle-field
or the hospital-wards. The marvellous beauty of all this wealth of
feelings felt and experienced adds its glory to the more commonplace
and less valuable woof of the historical narration. Turgénief, who
understood this, noted somewhere or other this difference; but there
are very few readers who can thus bethink themselves, and take account
of their illusions.
Wounded at Austerlitz, and taken to the French hospital, Andréi sees
Napoleon approach his bedside; that is to say, he sees the one who,
in his eyes, represents the ideal, the superhuman man, the hero, the
demigod. At death’s door, Andréi sees all things in a light which
reduces them to their real proportions. To him all Napoleon’s acts, all
his words, all the motives which make him act and speak, seem empty of
interest. He turns from the sight of what is only human, and, with his
eyes fixed solely on the medal which Marya hung around his neck on the
day of his departure, he endeavors to believe “in that ideal heaven
which alone promises him peace.”
Scarcely recovered from his wound, Andréi returns to his father’s home,
which he reaches in time to be present at his wife’s confinement.
There is here an admirable scene, which will be surpassed only by the
birth-scene described in the romance of “Anna Karénina.” All that
is dramatic, august, mysterious, in the opening flower of maternity
has been expressed by Tolstoï in these two passages. That of “Anna
Karénina” is famous. We feel nothing of the equivocal impressions
and the lugubrious effects, which, under the pretext of realism, the
author of “La Joie de Vivre” will put into a similar description. But a
parallel between the realism of Tolstoï and the realism of Zola would
carry us too far from our subject.
The impression left upon Andréi Bolkonsky by the death of his wife has
in no small degree contributed to develop in him the tendency toward
dissatisfaction with life. But one day a young girl comes into the
circle of shadow, and he instantly allows her to usurp its place. The
memory of a luminous vision is brought into the depths of his soul. All
the apparently sleeping springs of affection in his nature are stirred
up by the appearance of Natasha Rostova. Chance brings Andréi to the
young girl’s paternal mansion: he falls in love with her, and with this
new love begins the renewal of life.
The house of the Rostofs is the third of the seignorial homes which
Tolstoï opens to us, and it is the one where it is the easiest thing to
forget one’s self. Songs only are heard, merry laughter, the chatter
of fresh voices. The head of the family, Count Rostof, is a great
proprietor, ostentatious, but free from arrogance, and is carelessly
hurrying to his ruin; but no one better than he understands the
duties of hospitality. His wife is a sweet, good woman, adoring her
family, and by her family adored. There are two sons in the house. The
youngest, Petya, is a child at the beginning of the story; but he will
be seen in the ranks of the Russian army before the end of the book.
And Tolstoï, in describing his heroic death, will write a few pages,
the beauty and noble sadness of which, without any sense of detriment,
recall Virgil and the episode of Euryalus dying beside Nisus. The elder
brother, Nikolaï Rostof, is the typical young noble, born for military
life, for whom the profession of soldier is the first in the world,
who is too sound in mind, too healthy in body, not to carry everywhere
with him his good-humor and his off-hand manners. But he returns to
camp as to a second _home_, and weeps with joy to see his comrades
again; and he has no regret when he is once more in his tent, and he
submits to the yoke and habits of military life with the same sensation
of pleasure that a weary man feels when at last he has the chance to
lie down and go to sleep. Tolstoï makes use of Nikolaï Rostof just as
he does of Prince Andréi, in order to make us present with him during
a portion of the deeds of war which he wishes to relate. Rostof’s
impressions are not, however, like Bolkonsky’s: they recall pretty
closely the memories noted in the “Military Sketches” of Sevastópol. It
is evident that Tolstoï, who has very largely put himself into each of
his characters, has reflected himself in this peculiar side in this one.
In the house of the Rostofs, there is a whole swarm of young
girls,--the prudent Viéra, methodical and tiresome; the gentle Sonya,
a poor relation, who is loved by the son, and who worships him, even
to sacrifice: she will forego marriage with him, so that he may be
rich and happy. But a luminous face, dazzling with its freshness,
gayety, and grace, is that shown us in Natasha, Andréi Bolkonsky’s
“bride.” Natasha is so beautiful, that no one can see her without
loving her. She is willing to be loved without returning it. Happy
in the effect caused by her beauty, she mistakes all her coquettish,
maidenly caprices for honest, serious sentiments. She has imagined that
she was in love with her brother Nikolaï’s friend Boris, then with
Denisof, then with Prince Andréi, all in succession; but her passion
has never yet been really awakened. It is waiting for the appearance
of the last aspirant, the only one unworthy of being chosen; and
then it bursts forth with frightful violence. Natasha meets Anatoli
Kuragin: she yields to the fascination of his beauty, his boldness. He
shamelessly addresses a few coarse, flattering words to her; and she
is intoxicated by this unrefined incense more than by delicate homage.
She forgets that she is plighted to Prince Andréi: she allows herself
to listen to words of love. She loves; and she loves so passionately,
that, without hesitation, she consents to all that her seducer has
planned to lead her to irretrievable ruin. She is willing to elope. A
providential chance prevents her departure. Pierre Bezúkhof arrives in
time to reveal to the unfortunate young woman that Kuragin is married:
he gives him a pretty rough experience of his giant hand, and compels
Lovelace to return Natasha’s letters, and to pack off.
Natasha[52] falls ill with sorrow, shame, and remorse. The doctors
cannot get the better of this moral suffering. Religion alone puts
an end to it. A lady who lives in the country near the Rostofs comes
to Moscow during Lent, and takes Natasha with her to perform their
devotions. Each morning before daybreak they set out, and go to kneel
before the Virgin, “the blackened painting of whom is lighted up by the
candles and the first rays of the dawn.” Natasha prays with fervor,
with humility. She feels that she is gradually becoming somewhat
regenerated; and on the day when she is to receive the communion, she
finds herself “at peace with herself, and reconciled to life.”
“‘Count,’ asked Natasha of Pierre, as she paused, ‘do I do wrong to
sing?’ And she raised her eyes to his, and blushed.
“‘No. Wherein would lie the harm?... On the contrary. But why should
you ask me?’
“‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ replied Natasha, speaking hurriedly. But it
would grieve me to do any thing which might displease you. I saw,’ she
went on, without noticing that Pierre was embarrassed, and reddening in
his turn, ‘I saw his name in the order of the day.... Do you think that
he will ever forgive me? Do you believe that he will always be angry
with me? Do you?’
“‘I think,’ continued Pierre, ‘that he has nothing to forgive. If I
were in his place’--And the same words of love and pity which he had
spoken to her once before were on his tongue’s end, but Natasha did not
give him time to finish.
“‘_Akh!_ you? That is a very different thing,’ she cried
enthusiastically. ‘I don’t know a better and more generous man than
you. Such a man does not exist. If you had not helped me then and now,
I do not know what would have become of me.’ Her eyes filled with
tears, which she hid behind her music; and, turning around abruptly,
she began to practice her _solfeggi_, and to walk up and down.”
Thus begins the last romance in Natasha’s life. She loves Pierre
Bezúkhof, not with the fanciful love which she felt for Andréi, nor
the mad passion which Kuragin inspired in her, but with a pure, moral
affection, founded on esteem, on the similarity of thoughts and
feelings. This union is the only one which Tolstoï wishes to realize
for Bezúkhof, for it is the only kind which seems to him legitimate.
But, before it can be accomplished, it must needs be that the man to
whom Natasha had plighted her troth should be no longer between her and
the one whom she is to marry. Accordingly we are brought to witness
Andréi Bolkonsky’s death.
The French invasion of 1812 has roused all the powers of Russia.
From the _muzhik_ to the _velmozh_, every one has felt the impulse
of self-sacrifice. The Rostofs, whose second son Petya desires to go
as a hussar, are surprised in the midst of moving, by the arrival of
wounded, whom it is impossible to transport farther. They have some
of the furniture unloaded, and arrange a train of wagons. Among the
mortally wounded whom they have thus received is Prince Andréi. He
was struck by a bursting shell on the same day as Kuragin, and chance
has so brought it about that the wounded man can behold on his bed
of agony the man who stole Natasha’s heart from him. This is a most
powerfully dramatic scene. It is not the only one offered by this part
of the book. Natasha discovers, during the journey, that Prince Andréi
is in one of the wagons. She makes her way out during the night, and
comes to kneel by his bedside. Natasha and the Princess Marya meet at
this death-bed. The analysis of the wounded man’s last feelings and
sensations at the supreme moment is a marvel of divination: the ecstasy
of the evening hours, the delirium of the moments of somnolence, are
expressed with a power of imagination which makes one shudder.
Meantime, beside the Rostofs’ carriage walks a man of lofty stature, in
laborer’s attire. It is Pierre Bezúkhof, who also has desired to find
a chance to sacrifice himself. He did not join the army, like Andréi
Bolkonsky, Nikolaï Rostof, Petya, and the others. Does he think, then,
like the author of “My Religion,” that he has no right to kill a man,
even though it were an enemy of his country? He stays in Moscow, with
vague projects, which Fate, that mighty actor in the dramas of mankind,
according to the author of “War and Peace,” prevents him from putting
into execution. He is captured by the French, and endures a most trying
nomad captivity. But he finds among his comrades in misfortune a poor
soldier with wounded feet, and body devoured by vermin, and from him he
learns the great secret of existence. Platon Karataïef, in spite of his
pitiable exterior, personifies the moral and religious ideal, which, as
we have already seen, Count Tolstoï definitely came to accept. As soon
as the hero of “War and Peace,” Pierre Bezúkhof, has reached this limit
of his development, the story has only to proceed of its own inertia
to the conclusion. I feel that there is no necessity of delaying over
the final scenes. The Princess Marya, whose father is now dead, marries
Nikolaï Rostof, who had saved her life by quelling a revolt among the
serfs of Luisuia Gorui, the Bolkonsky’s domain. Bezúkhof, at last a
widower, is free to marry Natasha.