War and Peace Bibliomancy Reading
This oracle points to a randomly selected line from War and Peace. The surrounding passages are provided for context.
Your passage is from BOOK NINE: 1812 - CHAPTER XVII.
But it was gone forever.
For Context: BOOK NINE: 1812 - CHAPTER XVII
She said and felt at that time that no man was more to her than Nastásya Ivánovna, the buffoon.
Something stood sentinel within her and forbade her every joy.
Besides, she had lost all the old interests of her carefree girlish life that had been so full of hope.
The previous autumn, the hunting, “Uncle,” and the Christmas holidays spent with Nicholas at Otrádnoe were what she recalled oftenest and most painfully.
What would she not have given to bring back even a single day of that time!
But it was gone forever.
Her presentiment at the time had not deceived her—that that state of freedom and readiness for any enjoyment would not return again.
Yet it was necessary to live on.
It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had formerly imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the world.
But this was not enough.
She knew that, and asked herself, “What next?” But there was nothing to come.