War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [627]
“Non, monseigneur,” he said, suddenly recalling that Davout was a duke. “Non, monseigneur, vous n’avez pas pu me connaître. Je suis un officier militionnaire et je n’ai pas quitté Moscou.”*675
“Votre nom?”†676 asked Davout.
“Besouhof.”
“Qu’est-ce qui me prouvera que vous ne mentez pas?”‡677
“Monseigneur!” exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended, but in a pleading voice.
Davout raised his eyes and looked fixedly at Pierre. For a few seconds they looked at each other, and that gaze saved Pierre. In that gaze, beyond all the conventions of war and courts, human relations were established between these two men. In that one moment, they both vaguely felt a countless number of things and realized that they were both children of the human race, that they were brothers.
At first glance, for Davout, who had only just raised his head from his list, where human deeds and life were known by numbers, Pierre was only a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without taking a bad act on his conscience; but now he had seen him as a human being. He reflected for a moment.
“Comment me prouverez-vous la vérité de ce que vous me dites?”§678 Davout said coldly.
Pierre remembered Ramballe and named him and his regiment and the street where the house was.
“Vous n’êtes pas ce que vous dites,”#679 Davout said again.
In a trembling, faltering voice, Pierre began to give proofs of the correctness of his evidence.
But just then an adjutant came in and reported something to Davout.
Davout suddenly beamed at the news told him by the adjutant and began to button up. He had clearly forgotten all about Pierre.
When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he nodded, frowning, in Pierre’s direction and said to take him away. But where he was to be taken, Pierre did not know: back to the shed or to the place prepared for executions, which his comrades had shown him as they walked through the Devichye field.
He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was again asking something.
“Oui, sans doute!”*680 said Davout, but “yes” what, Pierre did not know.
Pierre did not remember how long he walked or where. In a state of total senselessness and torpor, seeing nothing around him, he moved his legs along with the others until they all stopped, and he stopped, too.
There was one thought in Pierre’s head all that time. It was the thought of who, finally, had sentenced him to be executed. It was not the people of the commission that had interrogated him: not one of them would or obviously could have done it. It was not Davout, who had given him such a human look. Another moment and Davout would have understood that they were doing a bad thing, but the adjutant who came in had prevented that moment. And that adjutant obviously had not wanted anything bad, but he also might not have come in. Who was it, finally, who was executing, killing, depriving of life, him—Pierre—with all his memories, longings, hopes, thoughts? Who was doing it? And Pierre felt that it was no one.
It was the order of things, the turn of circumstances.
Some order of things was killing him—Pierre—depriving him of life, of everything, annihilating him.
XI
From Prince Shcherbatov’s house, the prisoners were taken straight down the Devichye field, to the left of the Devichye Convent, and brought to the kitchen garden, where a post stood. Behind the post, a large pit had been dug, with freshly dug-up earth beside it, and a large crowd of people were standing in a semicircle around the pit and the post. The crowd consisted of a small number of Russians and a large number of Napoleonic troops out of rank: Germans, Italians, and French in various uniforms. To right and left of the post stood lines of French troops in blue uniforms with red epaulettes, in leggings and shakos.
The criminals were placed in a certain order, which was on the list (Pierre was sixth), and led to the post. Several drums suddenly began to beat on both sides, and Pierre felt that with this