* "Countess, there is mercy for every sin."

The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who had
entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter and
sidled out of the room.

"Yes, she is right," thought the old princess, all her convictions
dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. "She is right, but how
is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so
simple," she thought as she got into her carriage.

By the beginning of August Helene's affairs were clearly defined and
she wrote a letter to her husband--who, as she imagined, loved her very
much--informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her having
embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all the
formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to him by
the bearer of the letter.

And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful
keeping--Your friend Helene.

This letter was brought to Pierre's house when he was on the field of
Borodino.

CHAPTER VIII

Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having run down
from Raevski's battery a second time, made his way through a gully to
Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station, and
seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still entangled in
the crowds of soldiers.

The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away quickly
from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that day and return
to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own
bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of life would he
be able to understand himself and all he had seen and felt. But such
ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.

Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along which he
was going, still on all sides there was what there had been on the field
of battle. There were still the same suffering, exhausted, and sometimes
strangely indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers'
overcoats, the same sounds of firing which, though distant now, still
aroused terror, and besides this there were the foul air and the dust.

Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road, Pierre sat down
by the roadside.

Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay leaning on
his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved past him in
the darkness. He was