War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [315]
In the winter Prince Andrei came to Bald Hills, and was cheerful, meek, and affectionate, as Princess Marya had not seen him for a long time. She sensed that something had happened to him, but he said nothing to Princess Marya about his love. Before his departure, Prince Andrei had a long talk about something with his father, and Princess Marya noticed that before his departure they were both displeased with each other.
Soon after Prince Andrei’s departure, Princess Marya wrote to Petersburg from Bald Hills, to her friend Julie Karagin, whom Princess Marya had dreamed, as girls always do, of marrying to her brother, and who at that time was in mourning on the occasion of the death of her brother, killed in Turkey.23
Sorrows are clearly our common lot, my dear and tender friend Julie.
Your loss is so terrible that I cannot explain it to myself otherwise than as a special mercy of God, who—loving you—wants to test you and your excellent mother. Ah, my friend, religion and religion alone can—I do not say comfort—but deliver us from despair; religion alone can explain to us that which man cannot understand without its help: wherefore, why kind and lofty beings, who know how to find happiness in life, who not only harm no one but are necessary for the happiness of others, are called to God, while the evil, the useless, the harmful, or such as are a burden to themselves and to others, are left to live. The first death I saw, which I will never forget—the death of my dear sister-in-law—made that impression on me. Just as you ask fate why your wonderful brother had to die, so I used to ask why this angel—Liza—had to die, who not only did no wrong to anyone, but never had anything but kind thoughts in her soul. And what then, my friend? Five years have gone by, and I, with my small mind, am now beginning to understand clearly why she had to die and in what way this death was the expression of the infinite goodness of the Creator, all of whose actions, though for the most part we do not understand them, are nothing but manifestations of His infinite love for His creation. It may be, I often think, that she was too angelically innocent to have the strength to bear all the duties of a mother. She was irreproachable as a young wife; perhaps she could not have been so as a mother. Now, she has not only left us, and Prince Andrei especially, with the purest regret and memory, but she will probably obtain there the place which I dare not hope for myself. But, not to speak only of her, this early and terrible death, despite all our grieving, had the most beneficent influence on me and on my brother. Then, at the moment of loss, these thoughts could not have come to me; then I would have driven them away with horror; but now it is so clear and unquestionable. I am writing all this to you, my friend, only so as to convince you of the Gospel truth that has become life’s truth for me: not a single hair will fall from our heads without His will. And His will is guided only by His boundless love for us, and therefore everything that happens to us, everything, is for our own good.
You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. Despite all my wish to see you, I do not think so and do not wish to. And you will be surprised to learn that the reason for it is Buonaparte. And here is why. My father’s health has noticeably declined: he cannot bear to be contradicted, he becomes irritated. This irritation, as you know, is turned mostly towards political affairs. He cannot bear the thought that Buonaparte deals as an equal with all the sovereigns of Europe, and especially with ours, the grandson of the great Catherine! As you know, I am totally indifferent to political affairs, but from my father’s words and from his conversations with Mikhail Ivanovich, I know all that is happening in the world, and especially about all the honors rendered Buonaparte, who, it seems, only in Bald Hills,