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Volume II, Part Two, Chapter XX

In 1808 the Emperor Alexander traveled to Erfurt for a fresh meeting with the Emperor Napoleon, and in the highest Petersburg society there was much talk of the grandeur of this solemn interview.

By 1809 the intimacy of the two masters of the world, as Napoleon and Alexander were called, had reached such a point that, when Napoleon that year declared war on Austria, a Russian corps crossed the frontier to aid its former enemy Bonaparte against its former ally, the Austrian Emperor; reached such a point that in high society there was talk of the possibility of a marriage between Napoleon and one of the Emperor Alexander's sisters. But, apart from these external political considerations, at that time the attention of Russian society was turned with particular liveliness upon the internal reforms that were then being carried out in all branches of the administration of the state.

Life meanwhile — the real life of men, with their essential interests of health, sickness, labor, rest, with their interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, the passions — went on as always, independently of and apart from any political closeness or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte, and apart from all possible reforms.

Prince Andrei had spent two years in the country without once leaving it. All those undertakings on the estates which Pierre had set going at his own places and brought to no result, continually passing from one matter to another — all those undertakings had been carried out by Prince Andrei, without his displaying them to anyone and without any noticeable effort.

He possessed in the highest degree that practical tenacity which Pierre lacked, and which, without any flourish or strain on his part, set things in motion.

One of his estates, of three hundred peasant souls, was registered as free cultivators (this was one of the first instances of the kind in Russia); on others the corvée was commuted for a quitrent. At Bogucharovo a trained midwife was engaged at his expense to help the women in childbirth, and a priest, for a salary, taught the children of the peasants and house serfs to read and write.

One half of his time Prince Andrei spent at Bald Hills with his father and his son, who was still in the care of nurses; the other half in the Bogucharovo retreat, as his father called the village. Despite the indifference to all the external events of the world which he had shown to Pierre, he followed them assiduously, received many books, and to his surprise noticed, when people fresh from Petersburg — from the very vortex of life — came to him or to his father, that these people, in their knowledge of all that was taking place in foreign and domestic politics, lagged far behind him, who sat without stirring in the country.

Besides his occupations with the estates, besides his general occupation of reading the most varied books, Prince Andrei was at this time engaged in a critical analysis of our two last unfortunate campaigns and in drawing up a proposal for the reform of our military regulations and statutes.

In the spring of 1809 Prince Andrei set out for the Ryazan estates of his son, of whom he was the guardian.

Warmed by the spring sun, he sat in the carriage, glancing at the first grass, the first birch leaves, and the first puffs of white spring clouds scudding across the bright blue of the sky. He thought of nothing, but gazed cheerfully and idly from side to side.

They drove past the ferry where, a year before, he had talked with Pierre. They drove through a muddy village, past threshing floors and green winter crops, down a slope where snow still lay by the bridge, up a clay road washed out by the rains, past strips of stubble and bushes here and there turning green, and entered a birch wood that grew on both sides of the road. In the wood it was almost hot, the wind could not be heard. The birch, all sown over with sticky green leaves, did not stir, and from under last year's leaves, lifting them, the first green grass and lilac flowers thrust their way up. Small firs scattered here and there about the birch wood, with their coarse, perennial green, were an unpleasant reminder of winter. The horses snorted as they entered the wood and grew visibly damp with sweat.

The footman Pyotr said something to the coachman, and the coachman answered in the affirmative. But evidently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for Pyotr: he turned round on the box toward his master.

— Your Excellency, how easy it is! — he said, smiling respectfully.

— What?

— Easy, Your Excellency.

"What is he saying?" thought Prince Andrei. "Yes, about the spring, no doubt," he thought, looking about him. "Why, it is all green already... how soon! And the birch, and the bird cherry, and the alder are beginning too... But the oak gives no sign. Yes, there it is — the oak."

At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times as old as the birches that made up the wood, it was ten times as thick and twice as tall as each birch. It was an enormous oak, two arm-spans round, with branches that had evidently long been broken off and with broken bark overgrown with old scars. With its huge, ungainly, unsymmetrically sprawling, gnarled arms and fingers, it stood, an old, angry, scornful monster, among the smiling birches. It alone refused to yield to the charm of spring and would see neither the spring nor the sun.

"Spring, and love, and happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "And how do you not weary of that same stupid, senseless deception. Always one and the same, and always a fraud! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness. Look there — those crushed, dead firs sit ever the same; and there I too have spread out my broken, flayed fingers, wherever they have grown — out of my back, out of my sides. As they grew, so I stand, and I do not believe your hopes and deceptions."

Prince Andrei looked round at this oak several times as he drove through the wood, as though he expected something from it. Flowers and grass grew under the oak too, but it still stood among them, frowning, motionless, misshapen, and stubborn.

"Yes, it is right, a thousand times right, this oak," thought Prince Andrei. "Let others, the young, yield afresh to that deception, but we know life — our life is over!" A whole new series of thoughts, hopeless but mournfully sweet, arose in Prince Andrei's soul in connection with this oak. During this journey it was as though he thought over his whole life anew, and arrived at the same former, reassuring and hopeless conclusion: that there was no need for him to begin anything, that he must live out his life doing no evil, untroubled and desiring nothing.