War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [600]
“I thought we put something under him, Lord Jesus Christ,” said the valet.
For the first time Prince Andrei understood where he was and what had happened to him, and remembered that he had been wounded and how, the moment the caleche stopped in Mytishchi, he had asked to be taken into the cottage. Confused again by the pain, he had come to his senses in the cottage while drinking tea, and here again, repeating in his memory everything that had happened to him, he pictured most vividly to himself that moment in the dressing station when, at the sight of the suffering of a man he had no love for, those new thoughts, promising happiness, had come to him. And those thoughts, though vaguely and indefinitely, now took possession of his soul again. He remembered that he now had a new happiness, and that that happiness had something to do with the Gospel. That was why he had asked for the Gospel. But the position they had put him in, which was bad for his wound, and the new turning over, had confused his thoughts again, and he came back to life for the third time in the total silence of the night. Everyone around him was asleep. A cricket chirped in the room across the hall, someone shouted and sang outside, the cockroaches rustled on the table and the icons, and a fat autumnal fly beat against his headboard and around the candle with its big, mushroom-like snuff that stood next to him.
His soul was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks, feels, and remembers a countless number of subjects simultaneously, but has the power and strength to select one sequence of thoughts or phenomena and fix all his attention on it. A healthy man in a moment of the deepest reflection can tear himself away to say a few polite words to someone coming in and then return to his thoughts. But Prince Andrei’s soul was not in a normal state in this respect. The forces of his soul were all clearer and more active than ever, but they acted outside his will. The most diverse thoughts and notions took hold of him simultaneously. Sometimes his thought suddenly began to work, and with such strength, clarity, and depth as it had never been able to do in healthy conditions; but suddenly, in the middle of its work, it broke off and was replaced by some unexpected notion, and he was unable to return to it.
“Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me, inalienable from man,” he thought, lying in the quiet, semi-dark cottage and looking straight ahead with a feverishly wide, fixed gaze. “A happiness that is beyond material forces, beyond external material influences on man, a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of love! Every person can understand it, but only God could conceive and prescribe it. But how did God prescribe this law? Why the Son?…” And suddenly this course of thoughts broke off, and Prince Andrei heard (not knowing whether it was in delirium or in reality) some soft, whispering voice ceaselessly repeating in rhythm: “Piti-piti-piti” and then “ti-ti,” and again “piti-piti-piti” and again “ti-ti.” And at the same time, to the sound of this whispering music, Prince Andrei felt that above his face, above the very middle of it, a strange airy edifice of fine needles or splinters was being raised. He felt (though it was hard for him) that he had to try to keep his balance, so that this rising edifice would not collapse; but even so it kept collapsing and was raised again to the sounds of the measured, whispering music. “It stretches! stretches! stretches out, and keeps stretching!” Prince Andrei said to himself. While listening to the whisper and feeling this stretching edifice of needles being raised, Prince Andrei had glimpses of the red circle of light around the candle and heard the rustling of cockroaches and of the fly striking against the pillow and his face. And each time the fly touched his face, it made a burning sensation, and at the same time he was surprised that, hitting against the very area of his face where the