War And Peace полностью

Your letter of the 13th was a delight to read. So you do still love me, my poetic Julie, and absence, which you so roundly denounce, has not had its usual effect on you. You complain about absence – what would I say, if I could only dare to complain, deprived as I am of all who are dear to me? Oh, if we had no religion to console us, life would be so very sad. Why do you imagine I should look askance when you tell me of your affection for that young man? In these matters I am hard on myself and no one else. I understand such feelings in other people even if I have never had them myself, and if I cannot condone them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that Christian love, love for one’s neighbour, love for one’s enemies, is more deserving, sweeter, more beautiful than any feelings aroused by a young man’s lovely eyes in a romantically inclined young girl like yourself.

News of Count Bezukhov’s death reached us before your letter; my father was very moved by it. He says the count was the last but one representative of the Great Century⁴⁰ and he’ll be the next to go, but he will do his best to put this off as long as possible. God save us from that terrible misfortune. I cannot share your opinion of Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and this is the quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part played in it by Prince Vasily, it is very sad for both of them. Oh, my dear friend, our divine Saviour’s words, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God,⁴¹ are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasily, but I am sorrier still for Pierre. So young and burdened with this wealth, what temptations will he have to resist! If anyone asked what I would like most in the world, it would be to be poorer than the poorest beggar. Many thanks, dear friend, for the work you have sent me which is all the rage where you are. However, since you tell me that amid several good things there are others which our feeble human thinking cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time reading something unintelligible, which in the nature of things must turn out to be fruitless. I have never been able to understand the passion that some people have for befogging their thoughts by cleaving to the study of mystical books which can only awaken doubts in their minds, while inflaming the imagination and inclining them towards exaggeration, which goes right against Christian simplicity. Let us read the Apostles and the Gospel. Let us not seek to penetrate what they contain that is mysterious, for how dare we presume, miserable sinners that we are, to admit ourselves into the terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we still wear this mortal flesh that raises an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us rather confine ourselves to the study of those sublime principles which our divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below; let us seek to obey and to follow them; let us persuade ourselves that the less scope we give to our feeble human minds the more pleasing this will be to God, who rejects all knowledge that cometh not from him and the less we seek to peruse that which he has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will he reveal it to us through his Holy Spirit.

My father has not spoken to me of any suitor; all he has said is that he received a letter and has been expecting a visit from Prince Vasily. In relation to any marriage scheme concerning me, I can tell you, my dear and excellent friend, that I consider marriage to be a divine institution to which we must conform. However painful it may be for me, if the Almighty should ever impose upon me the duties of wife and mother, I shall strive to fulfil them as faithfully as I can, without troubling to consider my feelings towards him whom he may give me for a husband.