War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [518]
“Is the general here?” asked the adjutant, coming to the barrow.
“He was just here, he rode off that way,” they answered him, pointing to the right.
The adjutant looked at Pierre as if not knowing what to do with him now.
“Don’t worry,” said Pierre, “I’ll go up on the barrow if I may?”
“Yes, do. You can see everything from there, and it’s not so dangerous. I’ll come to fetch you.”
Pierre went to the battery, and the adjutant rode on. They saw no more of each other, and much later Pierre learned that this adjutant had had his arm shot off that day.
The barrow that Pierre went up on was that famous place (later known to the Russians as the battery of the barrow, or the Raevsky battery, and to the French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du centre) around which tens of thousands of men were brought down, and which the French considered the most important point of the position.
This redoubt consisted of a barrow in which trenches had been dug on three sides. In the area surrounded by the trenches stood ten cannon, firing through openings in the rampart.
In line with the barrow on both sides cannon also stood, firing steadily. Slightly behind the cannon stood infantry. Going up on this barrow, Pierre had no notion that this place surrounded by small trenches, where a few cannon stood firing, was the most important place in the battle.
On the contrary, it seemed to Pierre that this place (precisely because he was there) was one of the most insignificant places of the battle.
Having come up onto the barrow, Pierre sat down at the end of a trench that surrounded the battery and with an unconsciously joyful smile looked at what was happening around him. Now and then Pierre, with the same smile, got up and, trying not to bother the soldiers who were loading and rolling the guns, and who constantly ran past him with sacks and charges, strolled around the battery. The cannon of this battery fired steadily one after the other with a deafening roar and covered the whole area with powder smoke.
In contrast to the dread that was felt among the covering infantrymen, here at the battery, where a small number of people, busy with their work, were restricted, separated from the others by a trench—here one could feel a sort of family animation, the same and common to them all.
The appearance of Pierre’s nonmilitary figure in a white hat struck these men unpleasantly at first. The soldiers, passing by him, looked askance, with surprise and even fear, at his figure. The senior artillery officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, came up to Pierre, as if in order to check the action of the end cannon, and glanced at him curiously.
A young, round-faced little officer, still a perfect child, obviously just out of cadet school, commanding quite diligently the two cannon entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.
“Allow me, sir, to ask that you clear the way,” he said to him. “You cannot be here.”
The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly, looking at Pierre. But when they all became convinced that this man in the white hat not only was not doing any harm, but either sat peaceably on the slope of the rampart or, with a timid smile, politely making way for the soldiers, strolled around the battery under fire as calmly as if it were a boulevard, the feeling of hostile perplexity towards him gradually began to turn into a gentle and jocular sympathy, similar to what soldiers feel for their animals—the dogs, cocks, goats, and animals generally that live with military units. Then the soldiers mentally received Pierre into their family, adopted him, and gave him a nickname. “Our master” they nicknamed him, and gently made fun of him among themselves.
One cannonball plowed up the dirt two steps from Pierre. He looked around with a smile, brushing off the earth it spattered on his