Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace

BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12 5. CHAPTER V (continued)

To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: "Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."

On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:

La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille. Ah! contre les douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile.*

*Death gives relief and death is peaceful.

Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.

Julia said this was charming

"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a book. "It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair, showing the possibility of consolation."

In reply Boris wrote these lines:

Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible, Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible, Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler, Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite, Et mele une douceur secrete A ces pleurs que je sens couler.*

*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,

Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,

Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,

Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,

And mingle a secret sweetness

With these tears that I feel to be flowing.