Prince Andrei, sinking once more into unconsciousness, recovers to find Napoleon surveying him and calling him "une belle mort." When it is discovered that he is alive Napoleon congratulates him on his magnificent courage; but even the praise of this man, hitherto Prince Andrei's idol, does not move him. He has seen, once and for all, the emptiness of military glory. He recovers from his wound, and, softened and tender, returns to his family, who are mourning him as dead; he finds a son just born to him and his wife dying in childbirth. Henceforward Prince Andrei is changed, gentle, and tender, but melancholy, and regarding himself as a man whose life is done. Interest returns again when he meets Natasha Rostof--one of the most charming heroines in fiction; Natasha is the very embodiment of joy in life, all poetry, passion, and romance. She enthrals Prince Andrei, he is happy as he has never been, and they are betrothed, but the opposition of his family causes the marriage to be postponed. Unfortunately Natasha has the defects of her qualities; she allows herself to be fascinated (though only momentarily) by a hopelessly inferior man. Prince Andrei, deeply wounded both in his love and in his pride, refuses to forgive; the old bitterness against life, the old anger return once more. He seeks his rival, Kuragin, and, not finding him, re-enters military service. At the battle of Borodino Prince Andrei is wounded again, and this time, as it proves, fatally; he lingers for some weeks, and, before his death, fate grants him one last happiness; the Rostofs, in the flight from Moscow, sacrifice their own property to save some Russian wounded among whom, unknown to them, is Prince Andrei; he and Natasha meet again. In all Tolstoy's pages none are more lovely and pathetic than those depicting this union on the edge of the grave; for a time there is hope--the renewal of his heart's joy assisting the wounded man to rally--but it is only for a brief space, and there succeeds the tragic and terrible yet beautiful alienation of death. {40} Prince Andrei is one of the few Tolstoyan heroes who have no physical fear of death, who meet it, not with shuddering nausea, but with noble and grave composure. If he clings to life it is not from any weak fear but because life means Natasha, poetry, and joy; when the pang of resignation is once over, all is peace. "Prince Andrei not only knew that he was going to die, but he also felt that he was dying, that he was already half-way towards death. He experienced a consciousness of alienation from everything earthly, and a strange beatific exaltation of being. Without impatience and without anxiety, he waited for what was before him. That ominous Eternal Presence, unknown and far away, which had never once ceased, throughout all his life, to haunt his senses, was now near at hand and, by reason of that strange exhilaration which he felt, almost comprehensible and palpable."