ays the same and
always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look at those
cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking out my broken
and barked fingers just where they have grown, whether from my back or
my sides: as they have grown so I stand, and I do not believe in your
hopes and your lies."

As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times to
look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak,
too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid,
misshapen, and grim as ever.

"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince Andrew.
"Let others--the young--yield afresh to that fraud, but we know life,
our life is finished!"

A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully pleasant, rose
in his soul in connection with that tree. During this journey he, as
it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at his old conclusion,
restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for him to begin anything
anew--but that he must live out his life, content to do no harm, and not
disturbing himself or desiring anything.

CHAPTER II

Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the district
in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of which he was
trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the middle of May
Prince Andrew went to visit him.

It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already clothed in
green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water one longed to
bathe.

Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about which
he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the grounds
of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish cries behind
some trees on the right and saw a group of girls running to cross
the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran a
dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz dress, with
a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose locks of hair
escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing that he was a
stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.

Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so beautiful,
the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that slim pretty girl
did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and was contented and
cheerful in her own separate--probably foolish--but bright and happy
life. "What is