“How good it would be,” though Prince Andrey, as he glanced
at the image which his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and
reverence, “how good it would be if all were as clear and simple as it seems to
Marie. How good to know where to seek aid in this life and what to expect after
it, there, beyond the grave!”
“How happy and at peace I should be, if I could say now, ‘Lord, have mercy on me! . . .’ But to whom am I to say that? Either a Power infinite, inconceivable, to which I cannot appeal, which I cannot even put into words, the great whole, or nothing,” he said to himself, “or that God, who has been sewn up here in this locket by Marie? There is nothing, nothing certain but the nothingness of all that is comprehensible to us, and the grandeur of something incomprehensible, but more important!”