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By Root 3957 0

any possibility of discovering that essence, like all questions asked at trials, were aimed only at furnishing that channel down which the judges wished the answers of the accused to flow, leading him to the desired goal, that is, incrimination. As soon as he began to say something that did not conform to the purpose of incrimination, the channel was removed, and the water could flow wherever it liked. Besides that, Pierre experienced the same thing that an accused man experiences in any court: perplexity as to why all these questions were being asked him. He had the feeling that this trick of furnishing him with a channel was being used only out of indulgence or courtesy, as it were. He knew that he was in the power of these people, that it was only power that had brought him there, that only power gave them the right to demand answers to their questions, and that the only purpose of this gathering was to incriminate him. And therefore, since there was power and the wish to incriminate, there was no need for the trickery of questions and a trial. It was obvious that all answers should lead to finding him guilty. To the question of what he was doing when they arrested him, Pierre answered somewhat tragically that he was carrying a child qu’il avait sauvé des flammes*670 to her parents. Why had he fought with the looter? Pierre answered that he was defending a woman, that to defend an offended woman was the duty of every man, that…He was stopped: that did not suit the case. Why was he in the yard of the burning house, where witnesses had seen him? He answered that he had gone out to see what was happening in Moscow. He was stopped again: he had not been asked where he was going, but why he was near the fire. Who was he? they repeated to him their first question, which he had told them he did not want to answer. Again he said that he could not tell them.

“Write that down, it’s bad. Very bad,” the general with the white mustaches and flushed, ruddy face said sternly to him.

On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovsky rampart.

Pierre and thirteen others were led to the Krymsky ford, to the carriage shed of a merchant’s house. Going down the streets, Pierre choked from the smoke, which seemed to hang over the whole city. Fires could be seen on all sides. At that time Pierre still did not understand the significance of the burning of Moscow and looked at these fires with horror.

Pierre spent four more days in the carriage shed of the house near the Krymsky ford, and in the course of those days he learned from the conversation of the French soldiers that all those held there were awaiting the marshal’s decision any day. What marshal, Pierre could not find out from the soldiers. Apparently for the soldiers a marshal was a supreme and somewhat mysterious link in the chain of power.

Those first days, until the eighth of September—the day when the prisoners were taken for a second interrogation—were the hardest for Pierre.

X

On the eighth of September an officer came into the prisoners’ shed, a very important one, judging by the respect with which the guards addressed him. This officer, probably from the staff, with a list in his hands, made a roll call of all the Russians, referring to Pierre as celui qui n’avoue pas son nom.*671 And, looking indifferently and lazily over all the prisoners, he ordered the officer of the guards to get them decently dressed and tidied up before bringing them to the marshal. An hour later a company of soldiers arrived, and Pierre and the other thirteen were led to the Devichye field. The day was clear and sunny after rain, and the air was extraordinarily pure. The smoke did not spread as low as on the day when Pierre was taken from the guardhouse of the Zubovsky rampart; the smoke rose in columns in the pure air. Flames were not to be seen anywhere, but columns of smoke rose on all sides, and the whole of Moscow, all that Pierre could see of it, was one charred ruin. On all sides one could see waste spaces with stoves and chimneys and occasionally the scorched walls of stone houses. Pierre