“Spring, and love, and happiness! - as if this oak spoke. - And how not to get tired of the same stupid senseless deception! Everything is the same and everything is cheating! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness. Look, there are crushed dead spruces sitting, always the same, and there I spread my broken, tattered fingers, wherever they grew - from the back, from the sides. As I grew up, I still stand, and I do not believe your hopes and deceptions. "
Prince Andrey glanced back at this oak several times, driving through the forest, as if he was expecting something from it. There were flowers and grass under the oak, but he still stood in the middle of them, frowning, motionless, ugly and stubbornly.
"Yes, he is right, this oak is right a thousand times," thought Prince Andrey, "let others, young people, again succumb to this deception, but we know life - our life is over!" A whole new series of hopeless but sadly pleasant thoughts in connection with this oak arose in the soul of Prince Andrey. During this journey, he seemed to think over his whole life and came to the same old, reassuring and hopeless conclusion that he did not need to start anything, that he should live out his life without doing evil, without worrying and not wanting anything. ...