《War And Peace》　Book9 　CHAPTER XIX
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

EVER SINCE THE DAY when Pierre had looked up at the comet in the sky on his
way home from the Rostovs', and recalling Natasha's grateful look, had felt as
though some new vista was opening before him, the haunting problem of the vanity
and senselessness of all things earthly had ceased to torment him. That terrible
question: Why? what for? which had till then haunted him in the midst of every
occupation, was not now replaced by any other question, nor by an answer to the
old question; its place was filled by the image of her. If he heard or
talked of trivialities, or read or was told of some instance of human baseness
or folly, he was not cast down as of old; he did not ask himself why people
troubled, when all was so brief and uncertain. But he thought of her as he had
seen her last, and all his doubts vanished; not because she had answered the
questions that haunted him, but because her image lifted him instantly into
another bright realm of spiritual activity, in which there could be neither
right nor wrong, into a region of beauty and love which was worth living for.
Whatever infamy he thought of, he said to himself, "Well, let so and so rob the
state and the Tsar, while the state and the Tsar heap honours on him; but she
smiled at me yesterday, and begged me to come, and I love her, and nobody will
ever know it," he thought.

Pierre still went into society, drank as much, and led the same idle and
aimless life, because, apart from the hours he spent at the Rostovs', he had to
get through the rest of his time somehow, and the habits and the acquaintances
he had made in Moscow drew him irresistibly into the same life. But of late,
since the reports from the seat of war had become more and more disquieting, and
Natasha's health had improved, and she had ceased to call for the same tender
pity, he had begun to be more and more possessed by a restlessness that he could
not explain. He felt that the position he was in could not go on for long, that
a catastrophe was coming that would change the whole course of his life, and he
sought impatiently for signs of this impendingcatastrophe. One of his brother
masons had revealed to Pierre the following prophecy relating to Napoleon, and
taken from the Apocalypse of St. John.

In the Apocalypse, chapter thirteen, verse seventeen, it is written: "Here is
wisdom; let him that hath understanding, count the number of the beast; for it
is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred three-score and
six."

And in the fifth verse of the same chapter: "And there was given unto him a
mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and power was given unto him to
continue forty and two months."

If the French alphabet is treated like the Hebrew system of enumeration, by
which the first ten letters represent the units, and the next the tens, and so
on, the letters have the following value:-

Turning out the words l'empereur Napoléon into ciphers on this system,
it happens that the sum of these numbers equals 666, and Napoleon is thereby
seen to be the beast prophesied in the Apocalypse. Moreover, working out in the
same way the words quarante-deux, that is, the term for which the beast
was permitted to continue, the sum of these numbers again equals 666, from which
it is deduced that the terms of Napoleon's power had come in 1812, when the
French Emperor reached his forty-second year. This prophecy made a great
impression on Pierre. He frequently asked himself what would put an end to the
power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon; and he tried by the same system of
turning letters into figures, and reckoning them up to find an answer to this
question. He wrote down as an answer, l'empereur Alexandre? La nation
russe? He reckoned out the figures, but their sum was far more or less than
666. Once he wrote down his own name "Comte Pierre Bezuhov," but the sum of the
figure was far from being right. He changed the spelling, putting s for z, added
"de," added the article "le," and still could not obtain the desired result.
Then it occurred to him that if the answer sought for were to be found in his
name, his nationality ought surely to find a place in it too. He tried Le
russe Besuhof, and adding up the figure made the sum 671. This was only five
too much; the 5 was denoted by the letter "e," the letter dropped in the article
in the expression l'empereur Napoléon. Dropping the "e" in a similar way,
though of course incorrectly, Pierre obtained the answer he sought in L'russe
Besuhof, the letters of which on that system added up to 666. This discovery
greatly excited him. How, by what connection, he was associated with the great
event, foretold in the Apocalypse, he could not tell. But he did not for a
moment doubt of that connection. His love for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon's
invasion, the comet, the number 666, l'empereur Napoléon, and l'russe
Besuhof-all he thought were to develop, and come to some crisis together to
extricate him from that spellbound, trivial round of Moscow habits, to which he
felt himself in bondage, and to lead him to some great achievement and great
happiness.

The day before that Sunday on which the new prayer had been read in the
churches, Pierre had promised the Rostovs to call on Count Rastoptchin, whom he
knew well, and to get from him the Tsar's appeal to the country, and the last
news from the army. On going to Count Rastoptchin's in the morning, Pierre found
there a special courier, who had only just arrived from the army. The courier
was a man whom Pierre knew, and often saw at the Moscow balls.

"For mercy's sake, couldn't you relieve me of some of my burden," said the
courier; "I have a sack full of letters to parents."

Among these letters was a letter from Nikolay Rostov to his father. Pierre
took that; and Count Rastoptchin gave him a copy of the Tsar's appeal to Moscow,
which had just been printed, the last announcements in the army, and his own
last placard. Looking through the army announcements, Pierre found in one of
them, among lists of wounded, killed and promoted, the name of Nikolay Rostov,
rewarded with the order of St. George, of the fourth degree, for distinguished
bravery in the Ostrovna affair, and in the same announcement the appointment of
Prince Andrey Bolkonsky to the command of a regiment of light cavalry. Though he
did not want to remind the Rostovs of Bolkonsky's existence, Pierre could not
resist the inclination to rejoice their hearts with the news of their son's
decoration. Keeping the Tsar's appeal, Rastoptchin's placard, and the other
announcement to bring with him at dinner-time, Pierre sent the printed
announcement and Nikolay's letter to the Rostovs.

The conversation with Rastoptchin, and his tone of anxiety and hurry, the
meeting with the courier, who had casually alluded to the disastrous state of
affairs in the army, the rumours of spies being caught in Moscow, of a sheet
circulating in the town stating that Napoleon had sworn to be in both capitals
before autumn, of the Tsar's expected arrival next day-all combined to revive in
Pierre with fresh intensity that feeling of excitement and expectation, that he
had been conscious of ever since the appearance of the comet, and with even
greater force since the beginning of the war.

The idea of entering the army had long before occurred to Pierre, and he
would have acted upon it, but that, in the first place, he was pledged by his
vow to the Masonic brotherhood, which preached universal peace and the abolition
of war; and secondly, when he looked at the great mass of Moscow gentlemen, who
put on uniforms, and professed themselves patriots, he felt somehow ashamed to
take the same step. A cause that weighed with him even more in not entering the
army was the obscure conception that he, l'russe Besuhof, had somehow the
mystic value of the number of the beast, 666, that his share in putting a limit
to the power of the beast, "speaking great things and blasphemies," had been
ordained from all eternity, and that therefore it was not for him to take any
step whatever; it was for him to wait for what was bound to come to pass.