War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [275]
“Yes, here, in this woods, was that oak that I agreed with,” thought Prince Andrei. “But where is it?” he thought again, looking at the left side of the road, and, not knowing it himself, not recognizing it, he admired the very oak he was looking for. The old oak, quite transformed, spreading out a canopy of juicy, dark greenery, basked, barely swaying, in the rays of the evening sun. Of the gnarled fingers, the scars, the old grief and mistrust—nothing could be seen. Juicy green leaves without branches broke through the stiff, hundred-year-old bark, and it was impossible to believe that this old fellow had produced them. “Yes, it’s the same oak,” thought Prince Andrei, and suddenly a causeless springtime feeling of joy and renewal came over him. All the best moments of his life suddenly recalled themselves to him at the same time. Austerlitz with the lofty sky, and the dead, reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and a girl excited by the beauty of the night, and that night itself, and the moon—all of it suddenly recalled itself to him.
“No, life isn’t over at the age of thirty-one,” Prince Andrei suddenly decided definitively, immutably. “It’s not enough that I know all that’s in me, everyone else must know it, too: Pierre, and that girl who wanted to fly into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life is not only for myself; so that they don’t live like that girl, independently of my life, but so that it is reflected in everyone, and they all live together with me!”
Having returned from this trip, Prince Andrei decided to go to Petersburg in the fall, and thought up various reasons for this decision. A whole series of reasonable, logical arguments for why it was necessary that he go to Petersburg and even serve, was at his disposal every moment. He did not even understand now how he could ever have doubted the necessity of taking an active part in life, just as a month earlier he had not understood how it could ever occur to him to leave the country. It seemed clear to him that all his experience of life must go for naught and be meaningless, if he did not put it to work and again take an active part in life. He did not even understand how, on the basis of such poor rational arguments, it could have been obvious before that he would humiliate himself if now, after his lessons in life, he should again believe in the possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness and love. Now reason suggested something quite different. After his journey, Prince Andrei began to be bored in the country, his former occupations did not interest him, and often, sitting alone in his study, he would get up, go to the mirror, and look at his face for a long time. Then he would turn away and look at the portrait of the late Liza, who, with her hair curled à la grecque, looked at him tenderly and cheerfully from the gilt frame. She no longer said terrible words to her husband as before, she looked at him simply and cheerfully with curiosity. And Prince Andrei, putting his hands behind his back, would pace the room for a long time, now frowning, now smiling, thinking over those irrational thoughts, inexpressible in words, secret as a crime, that were connected with Pierre, with glory, with the girl on the windowsill, with the oak, with feminine beauty and love, which had changed his whole life. In those moments, if anyone came into his room, he was particularly dry, stern, resolute, and, in particular, unpleasantly logical.
“Mon cher,” Princess Marya would say, coming in at such a moment, “Nikolushka musn’t go for a walk today: it’s too cold.”
“If it were warm,” Prince Andrei would answer his sister with particular dryness at such a moment, “he would go only in his shirt, but since it’s cold, you must put warm clothes on him, which is why they were invented—that’s what follows from the fact that it is cold, and not that the child should stay at home when he needs air,” he would say with particular logicality, as if punishing someone for all that secret illogical work that