---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote [with corrections applied]:
After these words the Mason leaned on his elbow on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes, as though weary of prolonged talking. Pierre gazed at that stern, immovable, old, almost death-like face, and moved his lips without uttering a sound. He wanted to say, “Yes, a vile, idle, vicious life,” and he dared not break the silence. The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, Pierre getting up with downcast head, beginning to walk up and down the room, casting a glance from time to time at the Mason. “Yes, I had thought of it, but I have led a contemptible, dissolute life, but I did not like it, and if he liked he could reveal It to me.” Pierre wanted to say this to the old Mason but dared not. After packing his things with his practised old hands, the traveller buttoned up his sheepskin. On finishing these preparations, he turned to Pierre, and in a polite, indifferent tone, said to him: “Where you going now, sir?” ..answered Pierre in a tone of childish indecision, “I thank you. I agree with you in everything. But do not suppose that I have been so bad. With all my soul I have desired to be what you would wish me to be; But I have never met with help from any one . . . Though I was myself most to blame for everything. Help me, instruct me, and perhaps I shall be able . . .” Pierre could not say more; his voice broke and he turned away. The Mason was silent, obviously pondering something. “Help comes only from God,” he said, “but such measure of aid as it is in the power of our movement to give you, it will give you, sir. You go to this lecture and give them this” (he took out of his notebook and wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in to four). “One piece of advice let me give you. Devote your time first to meditation, solitude and self-examination, and do not return to your old manner of life. Therewith I wish you a good journey, sir, and all success . . .” The stranger was Osip Alexyevitch Bazdyev as Pierre found later and had been one of the most well known freemasons and Martinists even in Novikov's day. For a long time after he had gone Pierre walked about the room. He reviewed his vicious past, and with an ecstatic sense of beginning anew, pictured to himself a blissful, irreproachably virtuous future, which seemed to him easy of attainment. It seemed to him that he had been vicious simply because he had accidentally forgotten how good it was to be virtuous. Come on Buck, write your own stuff.
