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As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects
of the physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner
until after they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel,
and on the third day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell
ill and was laid up for three months. He had what the doctors
termed "bilious fever." But despite the fact that the
doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink,
he recovered.
Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that
happened to him from the time of his rescue till his illness.
He remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy,
internal physical distress, and pains in his feet and side. He
remembered a general impression of the misfortunes and sufferings
of people and of being worried by the curiosity of officers and
generals who questioned him, he also remembered his difficulty
in procuring a conveyance and horses, and above all he remembered
his incapacity to think and feel all that time. On the day of
his rescue he had seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same day
he had learned that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle
of Borodino for more than a month had recently died in the Rostovs'
house at Yaroslavl, and Denisov who told him this news also mentioned
Helene's death, supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before.
All this at the time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt
he could not grasp its significance. Just then he was only anxious
to get away as quickly as possible from places where people were
killing one another, to some peaceful refuge where he could recover
himself, rest, and think over all the strange new facts he had
learned; but on reaching Orel he immediately fell ill. When he
came to himself after his illness he saw in attendance on him
two of his servants, Terenty and Vaska, who had come from Moscow;
and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had been living on
his estate at Elets and hearing of his rescue and illness had
come to look after him.
It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre
lost the impressions he had become accustomed to during the last
few months and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him
to go anywhere tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his
warm bed, and that he would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and
supper. But for a long time in his dreams he still saw himself
in the conditions of captivity. In the same way little by little
he came to understand the news he had been told after his rescue,
about the death of Prince Andrew, the death of his wife, and the
destruction of the French.
A joyous feeling of freedom- that complete inalienable freedom
natural to man which he had first experienced at the first halt
outside Moscow- filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence.
He was surprised to find that this inner freedom, which was independent
of external conditions, now had as it were an additional setting
of external liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without acquaintances.
No one demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere. He had all
he wanted: the thought of his wife which had been a continual
torment to him was no longer there, since she was no more.
"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself
when a cleanly laid table was moved up to him with savory beef
tea, or when he lay down for the night on a soft clean bed, or
when he remembered that the French had gone and that his wife
was no more. "Oh, how good, how splendid!"
And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well,
and what then? What am I going to do?" And he immediately
gave himself the answer: "Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"
The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing
he had continually sought to find- the aim of life- no longer
existed for him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely
disappeared temporarily- he felt that it no longer existed for
him and could not present itself again. And this very absence
of an aim gave him the complete, joyous sense of freedom which
constituted his happiness at this time.
He could not see an aim, for he now had faith- not faith in
any kind of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living,
ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself.
That search for an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly
in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning but
by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God
is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in
Karataev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than
in the Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons.
He felt like a man who after straining his eyes to see into the
far distance finds what he sought at his very feet. All his life
he had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should
have merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.
In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable
infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere
and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he
had only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless.
He had equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into
remote space, where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance
had seemed to him great and infinite merely because it was not
clearly seen. And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry,
philosophy, and philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at
moments of weakness as he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated
to those distances and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness,
and senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great,
eternal, and infinite in everything, and therefore- to see it
and enjoy its contemplation- he naturally threw away the telescope
through which he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly
regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and
infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil
and happy he became. That dreadful question, "What for?"
which had formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer
existed for him. To that question, "What for?" a simple
answer was now always ready in his soul: "Because there is
a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from a man's
head."
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