Among these idle, insipid, untruthful souls, capable of every aberration, of every crime, certain saner natures are prominent: genuine natures by their clumsy candour, like Pierre Besoukhov; by their deeply rooted independence, their Old Russian peculiarities, like Marie Dmitrievna; by the freshness of their youth, like the little Rostoffs: natures full of goodness and resignation, like the Princess Marie; and those who, like Prince Andrei, are not good, but proud, and are tormented by an unhealthy existence. Now comes the first muttering of the waves. The Russian army is in Austria. Fatality is supreme: nowhere more visibly imperious than in the loosing of elementary forces--in the war. The true leaders are those who do not seek to lead or direct, but, like Kutuzov or Bagration, to "allow it to be believed that their personal intentions are in perfect agreement with what is really the simple result of the force of circumstances, the will of subordinates, and the caprices of chance." The advantage of surrendering to the hand of Destiny! The happiness of simple action, a sane and normal state.... The troubled spirits regain their poise. Prince Andrei breathes, begins to live.... And while in the far distance, remote from the lifegiving breath of the holy tempest, Pierre and the Princess Marie are threatened by the contagion of their world and the deception of love, Andrei, wounded at Austerlitz, has suddenly, amid the intoxication of action brutally interrupted, the revelation of the serene immensity of the universe. Lying on his back, "he sees nothing now, except, very far above him, a sky infinitely deep, wherein light, greyish clouds go softly wandering." "What peacefulness! How calm!" he was saying to himself; "it was not like this when I was running by and shouting.... How was it I did not notice it before, this illimitable depth? How happy I am to have found it at last! Yes, all is emptiness, all is deception, except this. And God be praised for this calm!..." But life resumes him, and again the wave falls. Left once more to themselves, in the demoralising atmosphere of cities, the restless, discouraged souls wander blindly in the darkness. Sometimes through the poisoned atmosphere of the world sweep the intoxicating, maddening odours of nature, love, and springtime; the blind forces, which draw together Prince Andrei and the charming Natasha, to throw her, a moment later, into the arms of the first seducer to hand. So _I_ much poetry, so much tenderness, so much purity of heart, tarnished by the world! And always "the wide sky which broods above the outrage and abjectness of the earth." But man does not see it. Even Andrei has forgotten the light of Austerlitz. For him the sky is now only "a dark, heavy vault" which covers the face of emptiness.