Prince Andrew knew he would die and felt he was already half dead, conscious of an aloofness from everything earthly and a strange joyous lightness. Formerly he had feared the end, first when the shell spun before him at Borodino, then in the torment after the wound. When unfettered love unfolded in his soul he had ceased to think about death. The more he took in that principle, the more he detached himself from earthly life. After the night at Mytishchi, when Natasha had appeared and he had pressed her hand to his lips, love for a particular woman crept back and bound him to life again. He was even tormented by whether Kuragin still lived, and dared not inquire.
What Natasha called this suddenly happened was the last spiritual struggle two days before Mary's arrival, when death gained the victory. That evening he was slightly feverish. Natasha sat knitting a stocking, screening the candle as old nurses do, because he had said there is something soothing in that work. He looked at her and asked whether fate had brought them together only for him to die. He told her he loved her more than anything in the world. She was sure he would live. He slept, then woke in a cold perspiration from a dream: indifferent people, a closed door, and something not human pressing in. He died in the dream and at that instant remembered he was asleep. Death is an awakening, he thought, and the veil lifted. From that day the wasting fever turned malignant. Natasha saw moral symptoms the doctor could not name. He was already leaving them; they attended on what most reminded them of him, his body, and did not foment their grief.
He confessed, received communion, and took leave. When they brought his son he pressed his lips to the boy's and turned away, then blessed him because it was demanded. After the last convulsions Mary asked if it was over. Natasha closed the dead eyes, clung to the body, and asked where he had gone. Little Nicholas cried from painful perplexity; the countess and Sonya from pity; the old count because he too must take that step. Natasha and Mary wept with a reverent emotion at the simple, solemn mystery accomplished in their presence.
Coming Up in Chapter 280
Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in man's soul. He snatches at the first intelligible approximation and says: This is the cause! In history that first approximation was the will of the gods, and after that the will of the heroes.
