his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of captivity. In the
same way little by little he came to understand the news he had been
told after his rescue, about the death of Prince Andrew, the death of
his wife, and the destruction of the French.

A joyous feeling of freedom--that complete inalienable freedom natural
to man which he had first experienced at the first halt outside
Moscow--filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He was surprised
to find that this inner freedom, which was independent of external
conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of external
liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without acquaintances. No one
demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere. He had all he wanted:
the thought of his wife which had been a continual torment to him was no
longer there, since she was no more.

"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid
table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down for
the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the French had
gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how splendid!"

And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what then?
What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the answer:
"Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"

The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he had
continually sought to find--the aim of life--no longer existed for
him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared
temporarily--he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not
present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the
complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at
this time.

He could not see an aim, for he now had faith--not faith in any kind
of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living, ever-manifest
God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself. That search for
an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity
he had learned not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his
nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In his
captivity he had learned that in Karataev God was greater, more infinite
and unfathomable than in the Architect of the Universe recognized by the
Freemasons. He felt like a man who after straining his eyes to see into
the far distance finds what he sought at his very feet. All his life
he had looked over