War and Peace

carcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt himself
falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness of reality,
he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of projectiles, groans
and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a feeling of horror and
dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he opened his eyes and
lifted his head from under his cloak. All was tranquil in the yard. Only
someone’s orderly passed through the gateway, splashing through the mud,
and talked to the innkeeper. Above Pierre’s head some pigeons, disturbed
by the movement he had made in sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof
of the penthouse. The whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful
smell of stable yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see
the clear starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.

“Thank God, there is no more of that!” he thought, covering up his head
again. “Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I yielded
to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time, to the
end...” thought he.

They, in Pierre’s mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the
battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before
the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood out
clearly and sharply from everyone else.

“To be a soldier, just a soldier!” thought Pierre as he fell asleep,
“to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them what
they are. But how to cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my
outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could have run
away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been sent to serve
as a soldier after the duel with Dólokhov.” And the memory of the dinner
at the English Club when he had challenged Dólokhov flashed through
Pierre’s mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at Torzhók. And now
a picture of a solemn meeting of the lodge presented itself to his mind.
It was taking place at the English Club and someone near and dear to him
sat at the end of the table. “Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor.
But he died!” thought Pierre. “Yes, he died, and I did not know he was
alive. How sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive
again!” On one side of the table sat Anatole, Dólokhov, Nesvítski,
Denísov, and others like them (in his dream the category to which these
men belonged was as clearly defined in his mind as the category of
those he termed they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dólokhov,
shouting and singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his
benefactor was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words
was as weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but
pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor
was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite
distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the
possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind,
firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they were
kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him. Wishing to
speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at that moment his
legs grew cold and bare.

He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his cloak
had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his cloak Pierre
opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs, posts, and yard, but
now they were all bluish, lit up, and glittering with frost or dew.

“It is dawn,” thought Pierre. “But that’s not what I want. I want to
hear and understand my benefactor’s words.” Again he covered himself up
with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was there.
There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that
someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.

Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that
someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of that
day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to think
and express his thoughts like that when awake.

“To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man’s freedom to
the law of God,” the voice had said. “Simplicity is submission to the
will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they are simple. They do
not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden.
Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not
fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know
his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing (Pierre went
on thinking, or hearing, in his dream) is to be able in your soul to
unite the meaning of all. To unite all?” he asked himself. “No, not
to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts
together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness
them!” he repeated to himself with inward rapture, feeling that these
words and they alone expressed what he wanted to say and solved the
question that tormented him.

“Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness.”

“Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your excellency!”
some voice was repeating. “We must harness, it is time to harness....”

It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone
straight into Pierre’s face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the
middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump
while carts were passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with
repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the carriage seat.
“No, I don’t want that, I don’t want to see and understand that. I want
to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream. One second
more and I should have understood it all! But what am I to do? Harness,
but how can I harness everything?” and Pierre felt with horror that the
meaning of all he had seen and thought in the dream had been destroyed.

The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an officer
had come with news that the French were already near Mozháysk and that
our men were leaving it.

Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him, went on
foot through the town.

The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind
them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses, and
the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts that
were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and blows could
be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which had overtaken
him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him to Moscow. On the
way Pierre was told of the death of his brother-in-law Anatole and of
that of Prince Andrew.