Villarsky was a married man with a family, whose time was taken up in managing his wife’s property, in performing his official duties, and in looking after his family. He regarded all these duties as a drawback in his life, and looked on them all with contempt, because they were all directed to securing his own personal welfare and that of his family. Military, administrative, political, and masonic questions were continually engrossing his attention. And without criticising this view or attempting to change it, Pierre watched this phenomenon—so strange, yet so familiar to him—with the smile of gentle, delighted irony that was now habitual with him.
In Pierre’s relations with Villarsky, with his cousin, with the doctor, and with all the people he met now, there was a new feature that gained him the good-will of all. This was the recognition of the freedom of every man to think, to feel, and to look at things in his own way; the recognition of the impossibility of altering a man’s conviction by words. This legitimate individuality of every man’s views, which had in old days troubled and irritated Pierre, now formed the basis of the sympathetic interest he felt in people. The inconsistency, sometimes the complete antagonism of men’s views with their own lives or with one another, delighted Pierre, and drew from him a gentle and mocking smile.
In practical affairs Pierre suddenly felt now that he had the centre of gravity that he had lacked in former days. In the past every money question, especially requests for money, to which as a very wealthy man he was particularly liable, had reduced him to a state of helpless agitation and perplexity. “Ought I to give or not to give？” he used to ask himself. “I have money and he needs it. But some one else needs it more. Who needs it more？ And perhaps both are impostors？” And of all these suppositions he had in old days found no satisfactory solution, and gave to all as long as he had anything to give. In old days he had been in the same perplexity over every question relating to his property when one person told him he ought to act in one way and another advised something else.
Now to his own surprise he found that he had no more doubt or hesitation on all such questions. Now there was a judge within him settling what he must do and what he must not, by some laws of which he was himself unaware.
He was just as unconcerned about money matters as before; but now he unhesitatingly knew what he ought to do and what he ought not to do. The first application of that new power within him was in the case of a prisoner, a French colonel, who called on him, talked very freely of his own great exploits, and finally delivered himself of a request that was more like a demand, that he should give him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children. Pierre refused to do so without the slightest difficulty or effort, and wondered himself afterwards that it had been so easy and simple to do what had in old days seemed so hopelessly difficult. At the same time as he refused the French colonel, he made up his mind that he must certainly resort to some stratagem when he left Orel to induce the Italian officer to accept assistance, of which he stood in evident need. A fresh proof to Pierre of his greater certainty in regard to practical matters was the settlement of the question of his wife’s debts, and of the rebuilding of his Moscow house and villas in the suburbs.
His head steward came to him in Orel, and with him Pierre went into a general review of his financial position. The fire of Moscow had cost Pierre, by the steward’s account, about two millions.
The chief steward to console him for these losses presented a calculation he had made, that Pierre’s income, far from being diminished, would be positively increased if he were to refuse to pay the debts left by the countess—which he could not be forced to pay—and if he were not to restore his Moscow houses and the villa near Moscow, which had cost him eight thousand to keep up, and brought in nothing.
“Yes, yes, that’s true,” said Pierre, with a beaming smile.
“Yes, yes, I don’t need any of them. I have been made much richer by the destruction of the city.”
But in January Savelitch came from Moscow, talked to him of the position of the city, of the estimate the architect had sent in for restoring the house, and the villa in the suburbs, speaking of it as a settled matter. At the same time Pierre received letters from Prince Vassily and other acquaintances in Petersburg, in which his wife’s debts were mentioned. And Pierre decided that the steward’s plan that he had liked so much was not the right one, and that he must go to Petersburg to wind up his wife’s affairs, and must rebuild in Moscow. Why he ought to do so, he could not have said; but he was convinced that he ought. His income was diminished by one-fourth owing to this decision. But it had to be so; he felt that.
Villarsky was going to Moscow, and they agreed to make the journey together.
During the whole period of his convalescence in Orel, Pierre had enjoyed the feeling of joyful freedom and life. But when he found himself on this journey on the open road, and saw hundreds of new faces, that feeling was intensified. During the journey he felt like a schoolboy in the holidays. All the people he saw—the driver, the overseer of the posting station, the peasants on the road, or in the village—all had a new significance for him. The presence and the observations of Villarsky, who was continually deploring the poverty and the ignorance and the backwardness of Russia, compared with Europe, only heightened Pierre’s pleasure in it. Where Villarsky saw deadness, Pierre saw the extraordinary mighty force of vitality, the force which sustained the life of that homogeneous, original, and unique people over that immense expanse of snow. He did not contest Villarsky’s opinions, and smiled gleefully, as he listened, appearing to agree with him as the easiest means of avoiding arguments which could lead to nothing.
