you about it yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything like it before. I am in love, my friend!”
Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.
“With Natásha Rostóva, yes?” said he.
“Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it, but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live without her! But can she love me?. . . I am too old for her.. . . Why don't you speak?”
“I? I? What did I tell you?” said Pierre suddenly, rising and beginning to pace up and down the room. “I always thought it. . . That girl is such a treasure. . . she is a rare girl. . . My dear friend, I entreat you, don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry, marry.. . . And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you.”
“But what of her?”
“She loves you.”
“Don't talk rubbish. . .” said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into Pierre's eyes.
“She does, I know,” Pierre cried fiercely.
“But do listen,” returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. “Do you know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone.”
“Well, go on, go on. I am very glad,” said Pierre, and his face really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a different, quite a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he made up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in his soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future, said he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice, and spoke of how he would either make his father consent to this marriage and love her, or would do without his consent; then he marveled at the feeling that had mastered him as at something strange, apart from and independent of himself.
“I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of such love,” said Prince Andrew. “It is not at all the same feeling that I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the other half is everything where she is not, and there all is gloom and darkness.. . .”
“Darkness and gloom,” reiterated Pierre: “yes, yes, I understand that.”
“I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake.”
“Yes, yes,” Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lot appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own.
CHAPTER XXIII
Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to obtain this he started for the country next day.
His father received his son's communication with external composure, but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life was already ending. “If only they would let me end my days as I want to,” thought the old man, “then they might do as they please.” With his son, however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole matter.
In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special stress on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. “Fourthly and finally,” the father said, looking ironically at his son, “I beg you to put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as you wanted to for a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your love or passion or obstinacy—as you please—is still as great, marry! And that's my last word on it. Mind, the last!. . .” concluded the prince, in a tone which showed that nothing would make him alter his decision.
Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his feelings, or his fiancée's, would not stand a year's test, or that he (the old prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to conform to his father's wish—to propose, and postpone the wedding for a year.
Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostóvs, Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.
Next day after her talk with her mother Natásha expected Bolkónski all day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was
