united in predicting the disappearance of the old world, and could make
no joint brotherly effort to rear the future world of truth and justice.
In that vast city of Paris stretching below him, spangled with stars,
glittering like the sky of a summer's night, Pierre also found a great
enigma. It was like chaos, like a dim expanse of ashes dotted with sparks
whence the coming aurora would arise. What future was being forged there,
he wondered, what decisive word of salvation and happiness would come
with the dawn, and wing its flight to every point of the horizon?

When Pierre, in his turn, was about to retire, Guillaume laid his hands
upon his shoulders, and with much emotion gave him a long look. "Ah! my
poor fellow," said he, "you've been suffering too for some days past, I
have noticed it. But you are the master of your sufferings, for the
struggle you have to overcome is simply in yourself, and you can subdue
it; whereas one cannot subdue the world, when it is the world, its
cruelty and injustice that make one suffer! Good night, be brave, act as
your reason tells you, even if it makes you weep, and you will find peace
surely enough."

Later on, when Pierre again found himself alone in his little house at
Neuilly, where none now visited him save the shades of his father and
mother, he was long kept awake by a supreme internal combat. He had never
before felt so disgusted with the falsehood of his life, that cassock
which he had persisted in wearing, though he was a priest in name only.
Perhaps it was all that he had beheld and heard at his brother's, the
want and wretchedness of some, the wild, futile agitation of others, the
need of improvement among mankind which remained paramount amidst every
contradiction and form of weakness, that had made him more deeply
conscious of the necessity of living in loyal and normal fashion in the
broad daylight. He could no longer think of his former dream of leading