“Then why do you serve?”

“I’ll tell you why. My father is one of the most remarkable men of his time. But he’s grown old, and he’s not cruel exactly, but he’s of too energetic a character. He’s terrible from his habit of unlimited power, and now with this authority given him by the Emperor as a commander-in-chief in the militia. If I had been two hours later a fortnight ago, he would have hanged the register-clerk at Yuhnovo,” said Prince Andrey with a smile. “So I serve under him now because no one except me has any influence over my father, and I sometimes save him from an act which would be a source of misery to him afterwards.”

“Ah, there you see!”

“Yes, it is not as you think,” Prince Andrey continued. “I didn’t, and I don’t wish well in the slightest to that scoundrelly register-clerk who had stolen boots or something from the militiamen; indeed, I would have been very glad to see him hanged, but I feel for my father, that is again myself.”

Prince Andrey grew more and more eager. His eyes glittered feverishly, as he tried to prove to Pierre that there was never the slightest desire to do good to his neighbour in his actions.

“Well, you want to liberate your serfs, too,” he pursued; “that’s a very good thing, but not for you—I expect you have never flogged a man nor sent one to Siberia—and still less for your peasants. If a peasant is beaten, flogged, sent to Siberia, I dare say he’s not a bit the worse for it. In Siberia he can lead the same brute existence; the stripes on the body heal, and he’s as happy as before. But it’s needed for the people who are ruined morally, who are devoured by remorse, who stifle that remorse and grow callous from being able to inflict punishment all round them. Perhaps you have not seen it, but I have seen good men, brought up in the traditions of unlimited power with years, as they grew more irritable, become cruel and brutal, conscious of it, and unable to control themselves, and growing more and more miserable.”

Prince Andrey spoke with such earnestness that Pierre could not help thinking those ideas were suggested to him by his father. He made him no reply.

“So that’s what I grieve for—for human dignity, for peace of conscience, for purity, and not for their backs or their heads, which always remain just the same backs and heads, however you thrash or shave them.”

“No, no, a thousand times no! I shall never agree with you,” said Pierre.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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