Voices in Time

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From the day when Pierre Bezukhov had gazed at the Great Comet of 1811-12 that seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was appearing on his own horizon—from that day, the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all earthly things that had incessantly tormented him no longer presented itself. When he listened to, or himself took part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of human baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly and did not ask himself why men struggled so about these things, when all is so transient and incomprehensible but he remembered Natasha Rostova as he had last seen her, and all his doubts vanished—not because she had answered the questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of her transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of spiritual activity in which no one could be justified or guilty—a realm of beauty and love which it was worth living for. Whatever worldly baseness presented itself to him he said to himself:

“Well, supposing someone has swindled the country and the tsar, and the country and the tsar confer honors upon him—what does that matter? She smiled at me yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her, and no one will ever know it.” And his soul felt calm and peaceful.

Pierre still went into society, drank as much, and led the same idle and dissipated life; the habits and acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that bore him along irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more disquieting reports came from the seat of war, an ever increasing restlessness which he could not explain took possession of him. He felt that the condition he was in could not continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which would change his whole life, and he impatiently sought everywhere for signs of that approaching catastrophe. One of his brother Masons had revealed to Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon, drawn from the Revelation of St. John:

In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said: “This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.”

And in the fifth verse of the same chapter: “The beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months.”

The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as the Hebrew, in which the first nine letters denote units and the others tens, will have the following significance:

a: 1; b: 2; c: 3; d: 4; e: 5; f: 6; g: 7; h: 8; i: 9; k: 10; l: 20; m: 30; n: 40; o: 50; p: 60; q: 70; r: 80; s: 90; t: 100; u: 110; v: 120; w: 130; x: 140; y: 150; z: 160.

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