the heads of the men around him, when he should have
merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.

In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable
infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and
had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had only
what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had equipped
himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space, where
petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to him
great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such
had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy
seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted
them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen
the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he
had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and
therefore--to see it and enjoy its contemplation--he naturally threw
away the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men's heads,
and gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable,
and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil
and happy he became. That dreadful question, "What for?" which had
formerly destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him.
To that question, "What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in
his soul: "Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one
hair falls from a man's head."

CHAPTER XIII

In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he
was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and seemed
occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something special
of his own. The difference between his former and present self was that
formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said to
him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly seeking to
distinguish something at a distance. At present he still forgot what was
said to him and still did not see what was before his eyes, but he now
looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what
was before him and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing
and hearing something quite different. Formerly he had appeared to be
a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been inclined to avoid
him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played roun