“I HAVE THE PLEASURE of speaking to Count Bezuhov, if I am not mistaken,” said the stranger, in a loud deliberate voice. Pierre looked in silence and inquiringly over his spectacles at the speaker. “I have heard of you,” continued the stranger, “and I have heard, sir, of what has happened to you, of your misfortune.” He underlined, as it were, the last word, as though to say: “Yes, misfortune, whatever you call it, I know that what happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune.”
“I am very sorry for it, sir.” Pierre reddened, and hurriedly dropping his legs over the edge of the bed, he bent forward towards the old man, smiling timidly and unnaturally.
“I have not mentioned this to you, sir, from curiosity, but from graver reasons.” He paused, not letting Pierre escape from his gaze, and moved aside on the sofa, inviting him by this movement to sit beside him. Pierre disliked entering into conversation with this old man, but involuntarily submitting to him, he came and sat down beside him.
“You are unhappy, sir,” he went on, “you are young, and I am old. I should like, as far as it is in my power, to help you.”
“Oh, yes,” said Pierre, with an unnatural smile. “Very much obliged to you … where have you been travelling from?” The stranger's face was not cordial, it was even cold and severe, but in spite of that, both the speech and the face of his new acquaintance were irresistibly attractive to Pierre.
“But if for any reason you dislike conversing with me,” said the old man, “then you say so, sir.” And suddenly he smiled a quite unexpected smile of fatherly kindliness.
“Oh, no, not at all; on the contrary, I am very glad to make your acquaintance,” said Pierre, and glancing once more at the stranger's hands, he examined the ring more closely. He saw the head of Adam, the token of masonry.
“Allow me to inquire,” he said, “are you a mason?”
“Yes, I belong to the brotherhood of the freemasons,” said the stranger, looking now more searchingly into Pierre's eyes. “And from myself and in their name I hold out to you a brotherly hand.”
“I am afraid,” said Pierre, smiling and hesitating between the confidence inspired in him by the personality of the freemason and the habit of ridiculing the articles of the masons' creed; “I am afraid that I am very far from a comprehension—how shall I say—I am afraid that my way of thinking in regard to the whole theory of the universe is so opposed to yours that we shall not understand one another.”
“I am aware of your way of thinking,” said the freemason, “and that way of thinking of which you speak, which seems to you the result of your own thought, is the way of thinking of the majority of men, and is the invariable fruit of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Excuse my saying, sir, that if I had not been aware of it, I should not have addressed you. Your way of thinking is a melancholy error.”
“Just as I may take for granted that you are in error,” said Pierre, faintly smiling.
“I would never be so bold as to say I know the truth,” said the mason, the definiteness and decision of whose manner of speaking impressed Pierre more and more. “No one alone can attain truth; only stone upon stone, with the co-operation of all, by the millions of generations from our first father Adam down to our day is that temple being reared that should be a fitting dwelling-place of the Great God,” said the freemason, and he shut his eyes.
“I ought to tell you that I don't believe, don't … believe in God,” said Pierre regretfully and with effort, feeling it essential to speak the whole truth.
The freemason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man, holding millions in his hands, might smile to a poor wretch, who should say to him that he, the poor man, has not five roubles that would secure his happiness.
“Yes, you do not know Him, sir,” said the freemason. “You cannot know Him. You know not Him, that is why you are unhappy.”
“Yes, yes, I am unhappy,” Pierre assented; “but what am I to do?”
“You know not Him, sir, and that's why you are very unhappy. You know not Him, but He is here, He is within me, He is in my words, He is in thee, and even in these scoffing words that thou hast just uttered,” said the mason in a stern, vibrating voice.
He paused and sighed, evidently trying to be calm.
“If He were not,” he said softly, “we should not be speaking of Him, sir. Of what, of whom were we speaking? Whom dost thou deny?” he said all at once, with enthusiastic austerity and authority in his voice. “Who invented Him, if He be not? How came there within thee the conception that there is such an incomprehensible Being? How comes it that thou and all the world have assumed the existence of such an inconceivable Being, a Being all powerful, eternal and infinite in all His qualities? …” He stopped and made a long pause.
Pierre could not and would not interrupt this silence.
“He exists, but to comprehend Him is hard,” the mason began again, not looking into Pierre's face, but straight before him, while his old hands, which could not keep still for inward emotion, turned the leaves of the book. “If it had been a man of whose existence thou hadst doubts, I could have brought thee the man, taken him by the hand, and shown him thee. But how am I, an insignificant mortal, to show all the power, all the eternity, all the blessedness of Him to one who is blind, or to one who shuts his eyes that he may not see, may not understand Him, and may not see, and not understand all his own vileness and viciousness.” He paused. “Who art thou? What art thou? Thou dreamest that thou art wise because thou couldst utter those scoffing words,” he said, with a gloomy and scornful irony, “while thou art more foolish and artless than a little babe, who, playing with the parts of a cunningly fashioned watch, should rashly say that because he understands not the use of that watch, he does not believe in the maker who fashioned it. To know Him is a hard matter. For ages, from our first father Adam to our day, have we been striving for this knowledge, and are infinitely far from the attainment of our aim; but in our lack of understanding we see only our own weakness and His greatness …”
Pierre gazed with shining eyes into the freemason's face, listening with a thrill at his heart to his words; he did not interrupt him, nor ask questions, but with all his soul he believed what this strange man was telling him. Whether he believed on the rational grounds put before him by the freemason, or believed, as children do, through the intonations, the conviction, and the earnestness, of the maso............