War and Peace (66 page)

The freemason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man, holding millions in his hands, might smile to a poor wretch, who should say to him that he, the poor man, has not five roubles that would secure his happiness.

“Yes, you do not know Him, sir,” said the freemason. “You cannot know Him. You know not Him, that is why you are unhappy.”

“Yes, yes, I am unhappy,” Pierre assented; “but what am I to do?”

“You know not Him, sir, and that’s why you are very unhappy. You know not Him, but He is here, He is within me, He is in my words, He is in thee, and even in these scoffing words that thou hast just uttered,” said the mason in a stern, vibrating voice.

He paused and sighed, evidently trying to be calm.

“If He were not,” he said softly, “we should not be speaking of Him, sir. Of what, of whom were we speaking? Whom dost thou deny?” he said all at once, with enthusiastic austerity and authority in his voice. “Who invented Him, if He be not? How came there within thee the conception that there is such an incomprehensible Being? How comes it that thou and all the world have assumed the existence of such an inconceivable
Being, a Being all powerful, eternal and infinite in all His qualities?…” He stopped and made a long pause.

Pierre could not and would not interrupt this silence.

“He exists, but to comprehend Him is hard,” the mason began again, not looking into Pierre’s face, but straight before him, while his old hands, which could not keep still for inward emotion, turned the leaves of the book. “If it had been a man of whose existence thou hadst doubts, I could have brought thee the man, taken him by the hand, and shown him thee. But how am I, an insignificant mortal, to show all the power, all the eternity, all the blessedness of Him to one who is blind, or to one who shuts his eyes that he may not see, may not understand Him, and may not see, and not understand all his own vileness and viciousness.” He paused. “Who art thou? What art thou? Thou dreamest that thou art wise because thou couldst utter those scoffing words,” he said, with a gloomy and scornful irony, “while thou art more foolish and artless than a little babe, who, playing with the parts of a cunningly fashioned watch, should rashly say that because he understands not the use of that watch, he does not believe in the maker who fashioned it. To know Him is a hard matter. For ages, from our first father Adam to our day, have we been striving for this knowledge, and are infinitely far from the attainment of our aim; but in our lack of understanding we see only our own weakness and His greatness …”

Pierre gazed with shining eyes into the freemason’s face, listening with a thrill at his heart to his words; he did not interrupt him, nor ask questions, but with all his soul he believed what this strange man was telling him. Whether he believed on the rational grounds put before him by the freemason, or believed, as children do, through the intonations, the conviction, and the earnestness, of the mason’s words, the quiver in his voice that sometimes almost broke his utterance, or the gleaming old eyes that had grown old in that conviction, or the calm, the resolution, and the certainty of his destination, which were conspicuous in the whole personality of the old man, and struck Pierre with particular force, beside his own abjectness and hopelessness,—any way, with his whole soul he longed to believe, and believed and felt a joyful sense of soothing, of renewal, and of return to life.

“It is not attained by the reason, but by life,” said the mason.

“I don’t understand,” said Pierre, feeling with dismay that doubt was stirring within him. He dreaded obscurity and feebleness in the freemason’s
arguments, he dreaded being unable to believe in him. “I don’t understand,” he said, “in what way human reason cannot attain that knowledge of which you speak.”

The freemason smiled his mild, fatherly smile.

“The highest wisdom and truth is like the purest dew, which we try to hold within us,” said he. “Can I hold in an impure vessel that pure dew and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of myself can I bring that dew contained within me to some degree of purity.”

“Yes, yes; that’s so,” Pierre said joyfully.

“The highest wisdom is founded not on reason only, not on those worldly sciences, of physics, history, chemistry, etc., into which knowledge of the intellect is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The highest wisdom knows but one science—the science of the whole, the science that explains the whole creation and the place of man in it. To instil this science into one’s soul, it is needful to purify and renew one’s inner man, and so, before one can know, one must believe and be made perfect. And for the attainment of these aims there has been put into our souls the light of God, called the conscience.”

“Yes, yes,” Pierre assented.

“Look with the spiritual eye into thy inner man, and ask of thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained with the guidance of the intellect alone? What art thou? You are young, you are wealthy, you are cultured, sir. What have you made of all the blessings vouchsafed you? Are you satisfied with yourself and your life?”

“No, I hate my life,” said Pierre, frowning.

“Thou hatest it; then change it, purify thyself, and as thou art purified, thou wilt come to know wisdom. Look at your life, sir. How have you been spending it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, taking everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have received wealth. How have you used it? What have you done for your neighbour? Have you given a thought to the tens of thousands of your slaves, have you succoured them physically and morally? No. You have profited by their toil to lead a dissipated life. That’s what you have done. Have you chosen a post in the service where you might be of use to your neighbour? No. You have spent your life in idleness. Then you married, sir, took upon yourself the responsibility of guiding a young woman in life, and what have you done? You have not helped her, sir, to find the path of truth, but have cast her into an abyss of deception and misery. A man injured you, and you have killed him, and you say
you do not know God, and that you hate your life. There is no wisdom in all that, sir.”

After these words the freemason leaned his elbow again on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes, as though weary of prolonged talking. Pierre gazed at that stern, immovable, old, almost death-like face, and moved his lips without uttering a sound. He wanted to say, “Yes, a vile, idle, vicious life,” and he dared not break the silence. The freemason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called his servant.

“How about horses?” he asked, without looking at Pierre.

“They have brought round some that were given up,” answered the old man. “You won’t rest?”

“No, tell them to harness them.”

“Can he really be going away and leaving me all alone, without telling me everything and promising me help?” thought Pierre, getting up with downcast head, beginning to walk up and down the room, casting a glance from time to time at the freemason. “Yes, I had not thought of it, but I have led a contemptible, dissolute life, but I did not like it, and I didn’t want to,” thought Pierre, “and this man knows the truth, and if he liked he could reveal it to me.” Pierre wanted to say this to the freemason and dared not. After packing his things with his practised old hands, the traveller buttoned up his sheepskin. On finishing these preparations, he turned to Bezuhov, and in a polite, indifferent tone, said to him:

“Where are you going now, sir?”

“I?… I’m going to Petersburg,” answered Pierre in a tone of childish indecision. “I thank you. I agree with you in everything. But do not suppose that I have been so bad. With all my soul I have desired to be what you would wish me to be; but I have never met with help from any one.… Though I was myself most to blame for everything. Help me, instruct me, and perhaps I shall be able …”

Pierre could not say more; his voice broke and he turned away.

The freemason was silent, obviously pondering something.

“Help comes only from God,” he said, “but such measure of aid as it is in the power of our order to give you, it will give you, sir. You go to Petersburg, and give this to Count Villarsky” (he took out his notebook and wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded into four). “One piece of advice let me give you. When you reach the capital, devote your time at first there to solitude and to self-examination, and do not return to your old manner of life. Therewith I wish you a good journey,
sir,” he added, noticing that his servant had entered the room, “and all success …”

The stranger was Osip Alexyevitch Bazdyev, as Pierre found out from the overseer’s book. Bazdyev had been one of the most well-known freemasons and Martinists even in Novikov’s day. For a long while after he had gone, Pierre walked about the station room, neither lying down to sleep nor asking for horses. He reviewed his vicious past, and with an ecstatic sense of beginning anew, pictured to himself a blissful, irreproachably virtuous future, which seemed to him easy of attainment. It seemed to him that he had been vicious, simply because he had accidentally forgotten how good it was to be virtuous. There was left in his soul not a trace of his former doubts. He firmly believed in the possibility of the brotherhood of man, united in the aim of supporting one another in the path of virtue. And freemasonry he pictured to himself as such a brotherhood.

On reaching Petersburg, Pierre let no one know of his arrival, went out to see nobody, and spent whole days in reading Thomas à Kempis, a book which had been sent him, he did not know from whom. One thing, and one thing only, Pierre thoroughly understood in reading that book; he understood what he had hitherto known nothing of, all the bliss of believing in the possibility of attaining perfection, and in the possibility of brotherly and active love between men, revealed to him by Osip Alexyevitch. A week after his arrival, the young Polish count, Villarsky, whom Pierre knew very slightly in Petersburg society, came one evening into his room with the same official and ceremonious air with which Dolohov’s second had called on him. Closing the door behind him, and assuring himself that there was nobody in the room but Pierre, he addressed him:

“I have come to you with a message and a suggestion, count,” he said to him, not sitting down. “A personage of very high standing in our brotherhood has been interceding for you to be admitted into our brotherhood before the usual term, and has asked me to be your sponsor. I regard it as a sacred duty to carry out that person’s wishes. Do you wish under my sponsorship to enter the brotherhood of freemasons?”

Pierre was impressed by the cold and austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always seen before at balls wearing an agreeable smile, in the society of the most brilliant women.

“Yes, I do wish it,” said Pierre.

Villarsky bent his head.

“One more question, count,” he said, “to which I beg you, not as a future mason, but as an honest man (
galant homme
) to answer me in all sincerity: have you renounced your former convictions? do you believe in God?”

Pierre thought a moment.

“Yes … yes, I do believe in God,” he said.

“In that case …” Villarsky was beginning, but Pierre interrupted him.

“Yes, I believe in God,” he said once more.

“In that case, we can go,” said Villarsky. “My carriage is at your disposal.”

Throughout the drive Villarsky was silent. In answer to Pierre’s inquiries, what he would have to do, and how he would have to answer, Villarsky simply said that brothers, more worthy than he, would prove him, and that Pierre need do nothing but tell the truth.

They drove in at the gates of a large house, where the lodge had its quarters, and, passing up a dark staircase, entered a small, lighted anteroom, where they took off their overcoats without the assistance of servants. From the ante-room they walked into another room. A man in strange attire appeared at the door. Villarsky, going in to meet him, said something to him in French in a low voice, and went up to a small cupboard, where Pierre noticed garments unlike any he had seen before. Taking a handkerchief from the cupboard, Villarsky put it over Pierre’s eyes and tied it in a knot behind, catching his hair painfully in the knot. Then he drew him towards himself, kissed him, and taking him by the hand led him away somewhere. Pierre had been hurt by his hair being pulled in the knot: he puckered up his face from the pain, and smiled with vague shame. His huge figure with his arms hanging at his sides, and his face puckered up and smiling, moved after Villarsky with timid and uncertain steps.

After leading him for about ten steps, Villarsky stopped.

“Whatever happens to you,” said he, “you must endure all with good courage if you are firmly resolved to enter our brotherhood.” (Pierre answered affirmatively by an inclination of his head.) “When you hear
a knock at the door, you may uncover your eyes,” added Villarsky; “I wish you good courage and success,” and, pressing Pierre’s hand, Villarsky went away.

When he was left alone, Pierre still went on smiling in the same way. Twice he shrugged his shoulders and raised his hand to the handkerchief, as though he would have liked to take it off, but he let it drop again. The five minutes he had spent with his eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs tottered, he felt as though he were tired out. He was aware of the most complex and conflicting feelings. He was afraid of what would be done to him, and still more afraid of showing fear. He felt inquisitive to know what was coming, what would be revealed to him; but above everything, he felt joy that the moment had come when he would at last enter upon that path of regeneration and of an actively virtuous life, of which he had been dreaming ever since his meeting with Osip Alexyevitch.

There came loud knocks at the door. Pierre took off the bandage and looked about him. It was black darkness in the room; only in one spot there was a little lamp burning before something white. Pierre went nearer and saw that the little lamp stood on a black table, on which there lay an open book. The book was the gospel: the white thing in which the lamp was burning was a human skull with its eyeholes and teeth. After reading the first words of the gospel, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God,” Pierre went round the table and caught sight of a large open box filled with something. It was a coffin full of bones. He was not in the least surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter upon a completely new life, utterly unlike the old life, he was ready for anything extraordinary, more extraordinary indeed than what he was seeing. The skull, the coffin, the gospel—it seemed to him that he had been expecting all that; had been expecting more, indeed. He tried to stir up a devotional feeling in himself; he looked about him. “God, death, love, the brotherhood of man,” he kept saying to himself, associating with those words vague but joyful conceptions of some sort. The door opened and some one came in. In the faint light, in which Pierre could, however, see a little by this time, a short man approached. Apparently dazed by coming out of the light into the darkness, the man stopped, then with cautious steps moved again towards the table, and laid on it both his small hands covered with leather gloves.