University of Virginia Library

I.

Sucked within the Maelstrom, man must go round. Strike
at one end the longest conceivable row of billiard balls in close
contact, and the furthermost ball will start forth, while all the
rest stand still; and yet that last ball was not struck at all.
So, through long previous generations, whether of births or
thoughts, Fate strikes the present man. Idly he disowns the
blow's effect, because he felt no blow, and indeed, received no
blow. But Pierre was not arguing Fixed Fate and Free Will,
now; Fixed Fate and Free Will were arguing him, and Fixed
Fate got the better in the debate.

The peculiarities of those influences which on the night and
early morning following the last interview with Isabel, persuaded
Pierre to the adoption of his final resolve, did now
irresistibly impel him to a remarkable instantaneousness in his
actions, even as before he had proved a lagger.

Without being consciously that way pointed, through the
desire of anticipating any objections on the part of Isabel to
the assumption of a marriage between himself and her; Pierre
was now impetuously hurried into an act, which should have
the effective virtue of such an executed intention, without its
corresponding motive. Because, as the primitive resolve so

deplorably involved Lucy, her image was then prominent in
his mind; and hence, because he felt all eagerness to hold her
no longer in suspence, but by a certain sort of charity of
cruelty, at once to pronounce to her her fate; therefore, it was
among his first final thoughts that morning to go to Lucy.
And to this, undoubtedly, so trifling a circumstance as her
being nearer to him, geographically, than Isabel, must have
contributed some added, though unconscious influence, in his
present fateful frame of mind.

On the previous undetermined days, Pierre had solicitously
sought to disguise his emotions from his mother, by a certain
carefulness and choiceness in his dress. But now, since his
very soul was forced to wear a mask, he would wear no paltry
palliatives and disguisements on his body. He went to the
cottage of Lucy as disordered in his person, as haggard in his
face.