We start with Andrei and Natasha. They are engaged, but Natasha, youthful and restless, falls prey to a bad boy’s wily charms.

Ludmila Savelyeva as Natasha in the Soviet Union’s 4-film series of War and Peace.

The bad boy is named Anatole. We already know him well by this point of the novel. He’s a selfish lout who may be having an incestuous relationship with his sister.

Anatole in the Broadway production of Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812.

Natasha renounces her engagement with Andrei and tries to elope with Anatole. It’s an impulsive, terrible decision, one we’re begging her not to make as we read.

But Natasha does it anyway, and everything goes wrong for her after that.

We knew it would.

Her engagement is ended, her family is furious, her status in Moscow society is damaged, and Natasha falls into a deep depression.

Then Pierre, who is madly in love with Natasha, comes to her house to comfort her.

Audrey Hepburn as Natasha; Henry Fonda as Pierre; Mel Ferrer as Andrei in Hollywood’s take on War and Peace in 1956.

What a pickle Pierre is in. Natasha’s at a low point in her life and he’d like nothing more than to sweep in and rescue her.

But he’s already married, and quite unhappily so.

Paul Dano as Pierre in the recent BBC miniseries adaptation of War and Peace.

Pierre is a fascinating character. Though not fully autobiographical, he’s clearly Tolstoy’s vessel for putting his own opinions into the story. Tolstoy, like Pierre, was a Count in charge of a vast estate and many serfs. Tolstoy, like Pierre, believed that the feudal system that so enriched him should die and Russia should ditch its monarchy for a Republic.

Tolstoy, like Pierre, was thoughtful and kind, determined to live an ethical life, but aware that his own influence as one man, even a wealthy man, was miniscule.

Come back with me to that scene where Pierre is comforting a weeping Natasha, who is convinced her life is ruined.

“One thing I beg you,” Pierre says, “look on me as your friend; and if you want help, advice, or simply want to open your heart to some one, think of me.”

Why, oh why Natasha did you fall for Anatole’s antics? You broke our hearts!

It’s the final chapter of Book 8 in War & Peace. We feel heartbroken for Natasha, who made an impulsive, youthful mistake with devastating consequences.

And we feel heartbroken for Pierre, who has made many mistakes of his own.

In a moment of candor, Pierre lets it all out, confessing to Natasha that he would marry her if he could.

“If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, best man in the world, and if I were free I would be on my knees this minute to beg for your hand and your love!”

It’s a big moment for Pierre. It’s the first time he’s spoken honestly to Natasha about feelings he’s had for years. And even though he can’t do anything about it, he feels stronger for having said it.

He should have married Natasha. It’s too late for him to fix that now, but the act of acknowledging that reality out loud changes him. Having been truly honest with Natasha, Pierre’s heart is ready to receive whatever truth about his place in the world that the world is ready to give.

He says goodnight to Natasha and steps outside.

The year is 1812. It’s a chilly winter night. Napoleon’s armies are massing on Russia’s borders. Revolutions in America and France have the aristocracy in Russia thinking that their time of unchecked opulence and privilege is up.

Pierre looks to the sky.

He sees a comet.

The comet Pierre sees was a real event. One of the brightest comets in history hung over the night sky for 260 days in 1811 and 1812.

We are 500 pages into the book when Pierre sees the comet. 500 pages into a story that brilliantly mingles the personal scale of individual lives with the political scale of great powers at war. We’ve been going back and forth between the story of Pierre and Natasha and the story of Napoleon’s army marching across Europe.

To Tolstoy’s audience, the comet that Pierre sees, a real comet that appeared over Europe in 1811 and 1812, was inextricably attached in the popular imagination to Napoleon’s march across Europe. It was an omen to the people who saw it. A signal in the night sky that terror was coming.

But Pierre doesn’t see it that way.

Pierre, who has spent the first half of the novel struggling and failing at most everything he has tried, sees the comet as a challenge to be better.

To Pierre, the vision of the comet perfectly complements the feeling in his heart that it’s time for him to rise up and be an honest man.

Are you ready to read the text?

Here, quoted in its entirety, is the breathtaking final paragraph of the final chapter of Book 8 of War and Peace. Enjoy.

“It was clear and frosty. Over the dirty, half-dark streets, over the black roofs was a dark, starlit sky. It was only looking at the sky that Pierre forgot the mortifying meanness of all things earthly in comparison with the height his soul had risen to. As he drove into Arbatsky Square, the immense expanse of dark, starlit sky lay open before Pierre’s eyes. Almost in the centre of it above the Prechistensky Boulevard, surrounded on all sides by stars, but distinguished from all by its nearness to the earth, its white light and long, upturned tail, shone the huge, brilliant comet of 1812; the comet which betokened, it was said, all manner of horrors and the end of the world. But in Pierre’s heart that bright comet, with its long, luminous tail, aroused no feeling of dread. On the contrary, his eyes wet with tears, Pierre looked joyously at this bright comet, which seemed as though after flying with inconceivable swiftness through infinite space in a parabola, it had suddenly, like an arrow piercing the earth, stuck fast at one chosen spot in the black sky, and stayed there, vigorously tossing up its tail, shining and playing with its white light among the countless other twinkling stars. It seemed to Pierre that it was in full harmony with what was in his softened and emboldened heart, that had gained vigour to blossom into a new life.”

Spencer Baum is the author of 7 novels. His latest audiobook, The Tetradome Run, is being released in full as a free podcast with a movie-quality score of music and sound effects. Play the video below to hear how it sounds.