War and Peace

he stores, the prisoners, and the marshal’s baggage train stopped at
the village of Shámshevo. The men crowded together round the campfires.
Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh, lay down with his
back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He again slept as he had
done at Mozháysk after the battle of Borodinó.

Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or another,
gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same thoughts that had
been expressed in his dream at Mozháysk.

“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that
movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness
of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed
than all else is to love this life in one’s sufferings, in innocent
sufferings.”

“Karatáev!” came to Pierre’s mind.

And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly old man
who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. “Wait a bit,” said
the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was alive—a vibrating
ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface consisted of drops
closely pressed together, and all these drops moved and changed places,
sometimes several of them merging into one, sometimes one dividing
into many. Each drop tried to spread out and occupy as much space as
possible, but others striving to do the same compressed it, sometimes
destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.

“That is life,” said the old teacher.

“How simple and clear it is,” thought Pierre. “How is it I did not know
it before?”

“God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect
Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from the
surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now, Karatáev
has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?” said the
teacher.

“Do you understand, damn you?” shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.

He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a Russian
soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting a piece
of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and his sinewy,
hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned the ramrod. His
brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly visible by the glow of
the charcoal.

“It’s all the same to him,” he muttered, turning quickly to a soldier
who stood behind him. “Brigand! Get away!”

And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned
away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier the
Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting something
with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the blue-gray dog,
sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.

“Ah, he’s come?” said Pierre. “And Plat—” he began, but did not finish.

Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his fancy—of
the look Platón had given him as he sat under the tree, of the shot
heard from that spot, of the dog’s howl, of the guilty faces of the two
Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and smoking gun, and of
Karatáev’s absence at this halt—and he was on the point of realizing
that Karatáev had been killed, but just at that instant, he knew not
why, the recollection came to his mind of a summer evening he had spent
with a beautiful Polish lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. And
without linking up the events of the day or drawing a conclusion
from them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a vision of the country in
summertime mingled with memories of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating
globe, and he sank into water so that it closed over his head.

Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid firing.
French soldiers were running past him.

“The Cossacks!” one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of
Russians surrounded Pierre.

For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him. All
around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.

“Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!” old soldiers exclaimed, weeping, as
they embraced Cossacks and hussars.

The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered them
clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he sat
among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier who
approached him, and kissed him, weeping.

Dólokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd
of disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had
happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed
Dólokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched them
with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent. On the
opposite side stood Dólokhov’s Cossack, counting the prisoners and
marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.

“How many?” Dólokhov asked the Cossack.

“The second hundred,” replied the Cossack.

“Filez, filez!” * Dólokhov kept saying, having adopted this expression
from the French, and when his eyes met those of the prisoners they
flashed with a cruel light.

* “Get along, get along!”

Denísov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some Cossacks
who were carrying the body of Pétya Rostóv to a hole that had been dug
in the garden.