Pierre became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the waves of the current beat softly against it below. Prince Andréy felt as if the sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre’s words, whispering:
“It is true, believe it.”
He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at Pierre’s face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his superior friend.
“Yes, if it only were so!” said Prince Andréy. “However, it is time to get on,” he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on that battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering, something that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and youthful, in his soul.
It vanished as soon as he returned to the customary conditions of his life, but he knew that this feeling which he did not know how to develop existed within him. His meeting with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince Andréy’s life. Though outwardly he continued to live in the same old way, inwardly he began a new life.
XIII
It was getting dusk when Prince Andréy and Pierre drove up to the front entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the house, Prince Andréy with a smile drew Pierre’s attention to a commotion going on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a wallet on her back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up. Two women ran out after them, and all