Prince Andrey did not answer. The coach and horses had long been taken across to the other bank, and had been put back into the shafts, and the sun had half sunk below the horizon, and the frost of evening was starring the pools at the fording-place; but Pierre and Andrey, to the astonishment of the footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood in the ferry and were still talking.
‘If there is God and there is a future life, then there is truth and there is goodness; and the highest happiness of man consists in striving for their attainment. We must live, we must love, we must believe,’ said Pierre,
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‘that we are not only living to-day on this clod of earth, but have lived and will live for ever there in everything’ (he pointed to the sky). Prince Andrey stood with his elbow on the rail of the ferry, and as he listened to Pierre he kept his eyes fixed on the red reflection of the sun on the bluish stretch of water. Pierre ceased speaking. There was perfect stillness.
' The ferry had long since come to a standstill, and only the eddies of the current flapped with a faint sound on the bottom of the ferry boat. It seemed to Prince Andrey that the lapping of the water kept up a refrain to Pierre’s words: ‘It’s the truth, believe it.’
Prince Andrey sighed, and with a radiant, childlike, tender look in his eyes glanced at the face of Pierre—flushed and triumphant, though still timidly conscious of his friend’s superiority.
‘Yes, if only it were so!’ he said. ‘Let us go and get in, though,’ added Prince Andrey, and as he got out of the ferry he looked up at the sky, to which Pierre had pointed him, and for the first time since Austerlitz he saw the lofty, eternal sky, as he had seen it lying on the field of Austerlitz, and something that had long been slumbering, something better that had been in him, suddenly awoke with a joyful, youthful feeling in his soul. That feeling vanished as soon as Prince Andrey returned again to the habitual conditions of life, but he knew that that feeling—though he knew not how to develop it—was still within him. Pierre’s visit was for Prince Andrey an epoch, from which there began, though outwardly unchanged, a new life in his inner world.
XIII
It was dark by the time Prince Andrey and Pierre drove up to the principal entrance of the house at Bleak Hills. While they were driving in, Prince Andrey with a smile drew Pierre’s attention to a commotion that was taking place at the back entrance. A bent little old woman with a wallet on her back, and a short man with long hair, in a black garment, ran back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up. Two women ran out after them, and all the four, looking round at the carriage with scared faces, ran in at the back entrance.
‘Those are Masha’s God’s folk,’ said Prince Andrey. ‘They took us for my father. It’s the one matter in which she does not obey him. He orders them to drive away these pilgrims, but she receives them.’
‘But what are God’s folk?’ asked Pierre.
Prince Andrey had not time to answer him. The servants came out to meet them, and he inquired where the old prince was and whether they expected him home soon. The old prince was still in the town, and they were expecting him every minute.
Prince Andrey led Pierre away to his own suite of rooms, which were always in perfect readiness for him in his father’s house, and went off himself to the nursery.
‘Let us go to my sister/ said Prince Andrey, coming back to Pierre;
'I have not seen her yet, she is in hiding now, sitting with her God’s folk. Serve her right; she will be put to shame, and you will see God’s folk. It’s curious, upon my word.’
‘What are “God’s folk”?’ asked Pierre.
‘You shall see.’
Princess Marya certainly was disconcerted, and reddened in patches when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps before the holy picture stand, there was sitting, behind the samovar, on the sofa beside her, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing a monk’s cassock. In a low chair near sat a wrinkled, thin, old woman, with a meek expression on her childlike face.
‘Andrey, why did you not let me know?’ she said with mild reproach, standing before her pilgrims like a hen before her chickens.
‘Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you,’ she said to Pierre, as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child, and now his friendship with Andrey, his unhappy marriage, and above all, his kindly, simple face, disposed her favourably to him. She looked at him with her beautiful, luminous eyes, and seemed to say to him: ‘I like you very much, but, please, don’t laugh at my friends.’
After the first phrases of greeting, they sat down.
‘Oh, and Ivanushka’s here,’ said Prince Andrey with a smile, indicating the young pilgrim.
‘Andryusha! ’ said Princess Marya imploringly.
‘You must know, it is a woman,’ said Andrey to Pierre in French.
‘Andrey, for heaven’s sake! ’ repeated Princess Marya.
