A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past,
while others plashed against something. The Cossacks
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and Dolokhov galloped after Petya into the gateway of the
courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke some of the French
threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes to meet
the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the
pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead
of holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly
and strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his
saddle. His horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was
smoldering in the morning light, stopped suddenly, and
Petya fell heavily on to the wet ground. The Cossacks saw
that his arms and legs jerked rapidly though his head was
quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his skull.
After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out
of the house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and
announced that they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted
and went up to Petya, who lay motionless with outstretched
arms.
‘Done for!’ he said with a frown, and went to the gate to
meet Denisov who was riding toward him.
‘Killed?’ cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the
unmistakably lifeless attitudevery familiar to himin which
Petya’s body was lying.
‘Done for!’ repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these
words afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the
prisoners, who were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. ‘We won’t take them!’ he called out to Denisov.
Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with trembling hands turned toward himself the
bloodstained, mud-bespattered face which had already
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gone white.
‘I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones… take
them all!’ he recalled Petya’s words. And the Cossacks
looked round in surprise at the sound, like the yelp of a
dog, with which Denisov turned away, walked to the wattle
fence, and seized hold of it.
Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and
Dolokhov was Pierre Bezukhov.
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Chapter XII
During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh
orders had been issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners among whom was Pierre.
On the twenty-second of October that party was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it
had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that
had traveled the first stages with them had been captured
by Cossacks, the other half had gone on ahead. Not one of
those dismounted cavalrymen who had marched in front of
the prisoners was left; they had all disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them during the first
days was now replaced by Marshal Junot’s enormous baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners
came a cavalry baggage train.
From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till
then moved in three columns, went on as a single group.
The symptoms of disorder that Pierre had noticed at their
first halting place after leaving Moscow had now reached
the utmost limit.
The road along which they moved was bordered on both
sides by dead horses; ragged men who had fallen behind
from various regiments continually changed about, now
joining the moving column, now again lagging behind it.
Several times during the march false alarms had been
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given and the soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run headlong, crushing one another, but
had afterwards reassembled and abused each other for their
causeless panic.
These three groups traveling togetherthe cavalry stores,
the convoy of prisoners, and Junot’s baggage trainstill constituted a separate and united whole, though each of the
groups was rapidly melting away.
Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a
hundred and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been captured or left behind. Some of
Junot’s wagons also had been captured or abandoned. Three
wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers from Davout’s corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned
that a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train
than to the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a
German soldier, had been shot by the marshal’s own order
because a silver spoon belonging to the marshal had been
found in his possession.
The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of
the three hundred and thirty men who had set out from
Moscow fewer than a hundred now remained. The prisoners
were more burdensome to the escort than even the cavalry
saddles or Junot’s baggage. They understood that the saddles and Junot’s spoon might be of some use, but that cold
and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally
cold and hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on
the road (in which case the order was to shoot them) was
not merely incomprehensible but revolting. And the escort,
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as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were
in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and
so rendering their own plight still worse, treated them with
particular moroseness and severity.
At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after
locking the prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their
own stores, several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under
the wall and ran away, but were recaptured by the French
and shot.
The arrangement adopted when they started, that the
officer prisoners should be kept separate from the rest,
had long since been abandoned. All who could walk went
together, and after the third stage Pierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had chosen
Karataev for its master.
On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again
fell ill with the fever he had suffered from in the hospital in
Moscow, and as he grew gradually weaker Pierre kept away
from him. Pierre did not know why, but since Karataev had
begun to grow weaker it had cost him an effort to go near
him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning with
which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places,
and when he smelled the odor emanating from him which
was now stronger than before, Pierre moved farther away
and did not think about him.
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not
with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that
man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him,
in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all un
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happiness arises not from privation but from superfluity.
And now during these last three weeks of the march he had
learned still another new, consolatory truththat nothing
in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no
condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so
there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack
freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their
limits and that those limits are very near together; that the
person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered
as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with
one side growing chilled while the other was warming; and
that when he had put on tight dancing shoes he had suffered
just as he did now when he walked with bare feet that were
covered with soreshis footgear having long since fallen to
pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wifeof
his own free will as it had seemed to himhe had been no
more free than now when they locked him up at night in a
stable. Of all that he himself subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely felt, the worst was
the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of
the gunpowder they used instead of salt was even pleasant;
there was no great cold, it was always warm walking in the
daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that
devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at
first hard to bear was his feet.
After the second day’s march Pierre, having examined
his feet by the campfire, thought it would be impossible to
walk on them; but when everybody got up he went along,
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limping, and, when he had warmed up, walked without
feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more terrible
to look at than before. However, he did not look at them
now, but thought of other things.
Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in
man and the saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to another, which is like the safety valve
of a boiler that allows superfluous steam to blow off when
the pressure exceeds a certain limit.
He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged behind, though more than a hundred
perished in that way. He did not think of Karataev who
grew weaker every day and evidently would soon have to
share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The
harder his position became and the more terrible the future,
the more independent of that position in which he found
himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that came to him.
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Chapter XIII
At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was
going uphill along the muddy, slippery road, looking at
his feet and at the roughness of the way. Occasionally he
glanced at the familiar crowd around him and then again
at his feet. The former and the latter were alike familiar and
his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran merrily along
the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its agility and
self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along on
three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark
at the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier
and sleeker than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the
flesh of different animalsfrom men to horsesin various stages of decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the
passing men the dog could eat all it wanted.
It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if
at any moment it might cease and the sky clear, but after a
short break
