Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky

Yes.

Prince Andrei is riding through a forest and encounters an ancient, massive oak tree that hasn't yet bloomed.

In his deeply depressed state, his internal predictive model is entirely negative.

So he projects that onto the tree.

It was all dreadfully difficult and complicated, and he replied to his mother in cold, formal letters in French beginning, My dear mama, and ending, Your obedient son, which said nothing of when he would return.

In 1810 he received letters from his parents in which they told him of Natasha's engagement to Bolkonsky, and that the wedding would be in a year's time because the old prince made difficulties.

This letter grieved and mortified Nicholas.

In the first place, he was sorry that Natasha, for whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family, should be lost to the home.

She did not seem at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband.

She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old.

This amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonsky's courtship skeptically.

He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew.

And in the cold, repellent glance the Emperor gave him, he now found further confirmation of this surmise.

The courtiers explained the Emperor's neglect of him by His Majesty's displeasure at Bolkonsky's not having served since 1805.

I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and antipathies, thought Prince Andrew, so it will not do to resent my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor personally, but the project will speak for itself.

He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend of his father's.

I am not petitioning, Your Excellency, returned Prince Andrew quietly.

Arakcheyev's eyes turned toward him.

Sit down, said he, Prince Bolkonsky.

I am not petitioning about anything.

Militiamen and recruits were being unrolled in the villages, and from the seat of war came contradictory news, false as usual, and therefore variously interpreted.

The life of old Prince Bolkonsky, Prince Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805. in eighteen o six the old prince was made one of the eight commanders-in-chief then appointed to supervise the enrolment decreed throughout russia despite the weakness of age which had become particularly noticeable since the time when he thought his son had been killed he did not think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been appointed by the emperor himself and this fresh opportunity for action gave him new energy and strength He was continually travelling through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfilment of his duties, severe to cruelty with his subordinates, and went into everything down to the minutest details himself.

Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in mathematics from her father, and when the old prince was at home, went to his study with the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas, as his grandfather called him.

the baby prince nicholas lived with his wet-nurse and nurse sa visioner in the late prince's rooms and princess mary spent most of the day in the nursery taking her mother's place to her little nephew as best she could mademoiselle bourienne too seemed passionately fond of the boy and princess mary often deprived herself to give her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel as she called her nephew and playing with him near the altar of the church at bald hills there was a chapel over the tomb of the little princess and in this chapel was a marble monument brought from italy representing an angel with outspread wings ready to fly upwards the angel's upper lip was slightly raised as though about to smile and once on coming out of the chapel prince andrew and princess mary admitted to one another that the angel's face reminded them strangely of the little princess but what was still stranger though of this prince andrew said nothing to his sister was that in the expression the sculptor had happened to give the angel's face prince andrew read the same mild reproach he had read on the face of his dead wife ah why have you done this to me soon after prince andrew's return the old prince made over to him a large estate bogokarova about twenty-five miles from bald hills partly because of the depressing memories associated with bald hills partly because prince andrew did not always feel equal to bearing with his father's peculiarities and partly because he needed solitude prince andrew made use of bogokarova began building and spent most of his time there after the austerlitz campaign prince andrew had firmly resolved not to continue his military service and when the war recommenced and everybody had to serve he took a post under his father in the recruitment so as to avoid active service the old prince and his son seem to have changed rles since the campaign of eighteen o five the old man roused by activity expected the best results from the new campaign while prince andrew on the contrary taking no part in the war and secretly regretting this saw only the dark side

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On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.

Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's absence.

Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days.

"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of those rare women with whom a man's honor is safe.

But, oh God, what would I not give now to be unmarried? You are the first and only one to whom I mention this, because I like you." As he said this, Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski who had lolled on Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with half-closed eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth.

Every muscle of his thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement.

His eyes, in which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant light.

In the dining room, which, like all the rooms in the house, was exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen, one behind each chair, stood waiting for the prince to enter.

The head butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making signs to the footmen and anxiously glancing from the clock to the door by which the prince was to enter.

Prince Andrew was looking at a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the Princes Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a badly painted portrait, evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the estate, of a ruling prince in a crown, an alleged descendant of Rurik and the ancestor of the Bolkonskis.

Prince Andrew, looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man who laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.

I do think that's why I read the Russians, too.

The, for that moment when, say, in Tolstoy, Prince Andrei is on the battlefield somewhere, and he looks up at the endless vastness of the sky, or Levin is cutting grass and he has this experience of-

Or Ivan Ilyich at the end is consumed and subsumed by a radiance.

And they're not all happy people.