He dreamed that he was lying in the very room in which he was lying in reality, but that he was not ill, but quite well. Many people of various sorts, indifferent people of no importance, were present. He was talking and disputing with them about some trivial matter. They seemed to be preparing to set off somewhere. Prince Andrey had a dim feeling that all this was of no consequence, and that he had other matters of graver moment to think of, but still he went on uttering empty witticisms of some sort that surprised them. By degrees all these people began to disappear, and the one thing left was the question of closing the door. He got up and went towards the door to close it and bolt it. Everything depended on whether he were in time to shut it or not. He was going, he was hurrying, but his legs would not move, and he knew that he would not have time to shut the door, but still he was painfully straining every effort to do so. And an agonising terror came upon him. And that terror was the fear of death; behind the door stood It. But while he is helplessly and clumsily struggling towards the door, that something awful is already pressing against the other side of it, and forcing the door open. Something not human—death—is forcing the door open, and he must hold it to. He clutches at the door with a last straining effort—to shut it is impossible, at least to hold it—but his efforts are feeble and awkward; and, under the pressure of that awful thing, the door opens and shuts again.

Once more It was pressing on the door from without. His last, supernatural efforts are vain, and both leaves of the door are noiselessly opened. It comes in, and it is death. And Prince Andrey died.

But at the instant when in his dream he died, Prince Andrey recollected that he was asleep; and at the instant when he was dying, he made an effort and waked up.

“Yes, that was death. I died and I waked up. Yes, death is an awakening,” flashed with sudden light into his soul, and the veil that had till then hidden the unknown was lifted before his spiritual vision. He felt, as it were, set free from some force that held him in bondage, and was aware of that strange lightness of being that had not left him since.

When he waked up in a cold sweat and moved on the couch, Natasha went up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer, and looked at her with strange eyes, not understanding her.

That was the change that had come over him two days before Princess Marya’s arrival. The doctor said that from that day the wasting fever had assumed a more serious aspect, but Natasha paid little heed to what the doctor said; she saw the terrible moral symptoms, that for her were far more convincing.

With his awakening from sleep that day there began for Prince Andrey an awakening from life. And in relation to the duration of life it seemed to him not more prolonged than the awakening from sleep in relation to the duration of a dream. There was nothing violent or terrible in this relatively slow awakening.

His last days and hours passed in a simple and commonplace way. Princess Marya and Natasha, who never left his side, both felt that. They did not weep nor shudder, and towards the last they both felt they were waiting not on him (he was no more; he had gone far away from them), but on the nearest memory of him—his body. The feelings of both of them were so strong that the external, horrible side of death did not affect them, and they did not find it needful to work up their grief. They did not weep either in his presence nor away from him, and they never even talked of him together. They felt that they could not express in words what they understood.

They both saw that he was slowly and quietly slipping further and further away from them, and both knew that this must be so, and that it was well. He received absolution and extreme unction; every one came to bid him good-bye. When his son was brought in to him, he pressed his lips to him and turned away, not because it was painful or sad to him (Princess Marya and Natasha saw that), but simply because he supposed he had done all that was required of him. But he was told to give him his blessing, he did what was required, and looked round as though to ask whether there was anything else he must do. When the body, deserted by the spirit, passed through its last struggles, Princess Marya and Natasha were there.