War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [317]
“Write your brother that he should wait till I die…It won’t be long—I’ll soon unbind him…”
The princess was about to make some objection, but her father did not let her, and began raising his voice more and more.
“Marry, marry, dear boy…They’re of good stock!…Clever people, eh? Rich, eh? Yes. A fine stepmother for Nikolushka. Write him that he can marry tomorrow even. She’ll be Nikolushka’s stepmother, and I’ll marry little Bourienne!…Ha, ha, ha, so he won’t be without a stepmother himself! Only one thing, there’s no need for more women in my house; let him marry and live separately. Maybe you’ll move in with him?” he turned to Princess Marya. “God help you, and good riddance…good riddance!…”
After this outburst, the prince never once spoke of the matter again. But his suppressed vexation with his son’s faint-heartedness showed itself in the relations between father and daughter. To the previous subjects of mockery a new one was added—talk about stepmothers and his amiability towards Mlle Bourienne.
“Why shouldn’t I marry her?” he said to his daughter. “She’d make a nice princess!” And lately, to her perplexity and astonishment, Princess Marya began to notice that her father had indeed become more and more intimate with the Frenchwoman. Princess Marya wrote to Prince Andrei about how their father had taken his letter; but she comforted her brother, giving him hope of reconciling their father to the thought.
Nikolushka and his upbringing, André, and religion were Princess Marya’s comforts and joys; but, besides that, since every human being needs his personal hope, Princess Marya had in the deepest recesses of her soul a hidden dream and hope, which provided the main comfort of her life. This comforting dream and hope were given her by the people of God—the fools for Christ and wanderers who visited her in secret from the old prince. The longer Princess Marya lived, the more of life she experienced and observed, the more astonished she was at the shortsightedness of people who sought pleasure and happiness here on earth; who worked, suffered, struggled, and did evil to each other to achieve this impossible, illusory, and fallacious happiness. “Prince Andrei loved his wife, she dies, it’s not enough for him, he wants to bind up his happiness with another woman. Father doesn’t want it, because he wants a more aristocratic and wealthy marriage for Andrei. And they all struggle and suffer, and torment and ruin their souls, their eternal souls, to achieve blessings that last a moment. Not only do we know it ourselves—Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth and told us that this life is a momentary life, a trial, yet we keep holding on to it and hope to find happiness in it. How is it no one understands that?” thought Princess Marya. “No one except these contemptible people of God, who come to me at the back door with bags over their shoulders, afraid of being noticed by the prince, not because they would suffer from him, but so as not to lead him into sin. To leave family, birthplace, all cares for worldly goods, so as to walk, without clinging to anything, in coarse rags, under an assumed name, from place to place, without harming people, and praying for them, praying for those who persecute and for those who protect: there is no truth and life higher than this truth and life!”
There was one woman wanderer, Fedosyushka, a fifty-year-old, small, quiet, pockmarked woman, who had been walking barefoot and in chains24 for thirty years already. Princess Marya had a special love for her. Once, when in the dark room, by the light of the icon lamp, Fedosyushka was telling about her life, the thought that Fedosyushka alone had found the right way of life suddenly came to Princess Marya with such force that she herself decided to go wandering. When Fedosyushka went to bed, Princess Marya thought about it for a long time, and finally decided that, however strange it was, she had to become a wanderer. She