‘Oh, nothing, only silly nonsense,’ said Natasha, breaking into a more teaming smile than ever. ‘I was only going to tell you about Petya. Nurse :ame up to take him from me to-day, he laughed and puckered up his face and squeezed up to me—I suppose he thought he was hiding. He’s awfully sweet. . . . There he is crying. Well, good-bye! ’ and she ran out 3 f the room.
Meanwhile, below in Nikolinka Bolkonsky’s bedroom a lamp was burning as usual (the boy was afraid of the dark and could not be cured of this weakness). Dessalle was asleep with his head high on his four pillows, and his Roman nose gave forth rhythmic sounds of snoring. Nikolinka had just waked up in a cold sweat, and was sitting up in bed, gazing with
wide-open eyes straight before him. He had been waked by a fearfi dream. In his dream his Uncle Pierre and he in helmets, such as appeare in the illustrations in his Plutarch, were marching at the head of an in mense army. This army was made up of slanting, white threads that fille the air like those spider-webs that float in autumn and that Dessall used to call le fil de la Vierge. Ahead of them was glory, which was soitk thing like those threads too, only somewhat more opaque. They—he an Pierre—were flying lightly and happily nearer and nearer to their goa All at once the threads that moved them seemed to grow weak ani tangled; and it was all difficult. And Uncle Nikolay stood before them ii a stern and menacing attitude.
‘Have you done this?’ he said, pointing to broken pens and sticks o sealing-wax. ‘I did love you, but Araktcheev has bidden me, and I will kil the first that moves forward.’
Nikolinka looked round for Pierre; but Pierre was not there. Insteac of Pierre, there was his father—Prince Andrey—and his father had nc shape or form, but he was there; and seeing him, Nikolinka felt the weakness of love; he felt powerless, limp, and relaxed. His father caressed him and pitied him, but his Uncle Nikolay was moving down upon them, coming closer and closer. A great horror came over Nikolinka, and he waked up.
‘My father!’ he thought. (Although there were two very good portraits of Prince Andrey in the house, Nikolinka never thought of his father in human form.) ‘My father has been with me, and has caressed; me. He approved of me; he approved of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he might tell me, I would do it. Mucius Scaevola burnt his hand. But why should not the same sort of thing happen in my life? I know they want me to study. And I am going to study. But some day I shall have finished, and then I will act. One thing only I pray God for, that the same sort of thing may happen with me as with Plutarch's men, and I will act in the same way. I will do more. Every one shall know of me, shall love me, and admire me.’ And all at once Nikolinka felt his breast heaving with sobs, and he burst into tears.
‘Are you ill?’ he heard Dessalle’s voice.
‘No,’ answered Nikolinka, and he lay back on his pillow. ‘How good and kind he is; I love him!’ He thought of Dessalle. ‘But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man! And my father? Father! Father! Yes, I will do something that even he would be content with . . .’
PART II
I
Iie subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch ad pin down in words—that is, to describe directly the life, not only of Imanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.
All the ancient historians employed the same method for describing and (tching what is seemingly elusive—that is, the life of a people. They (scribed the career of individual persons ruling peoples; and their jtivity was to them an expression of the activity of the whole people. The questions, In what way individual persons made nations act i accordance with their will, and by what the will of those individuals emselves was controlled, the ancients answered, By the will of God; hich in the first case made the nation subject to the will of one chosen :rson, and, in the second, guided the will of that chosen monarch to the dained end.
For the ancients these questions were solved by faith in the immediate irticipation of the Deity in the affairs of mankind.
Modern history has theoretically rejected both those positions. One ould have thought that rejecting the convictions of the ancients of men’s jbjection to the Deity, and of a defined goal to which nations are led, lodern history should have studied, not the manifestations of power, ut the causes that go to its formation. But modern history has not done rat. While in theory rejecting the views of the ancients, it follows them 1 practice.
