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By Root 3508 0

he entered the shed, established itself among his comrades. With his knowledge of languages, the respect the French showed him, the simplicity with which he gave everything he was asked for (he received an officer’s three roubles a week), his strength, which he showed to the soldiers by pushing nails into the wall of the shed, the meekness he manifested in his relations with his comrades, his ability, which they found incomprehensible, to sit motionless and think, doing nothing, Pierre seemed something of a mysterious and supreme being to the soldiers. The very qualities which, in the world he formerly lived in, were, if not harmful, at least a hindrance to him—his strength, his scorn of life’s comforts, his absentmindedness, his simplicity—here, among these people, gave him almost the status of a hero. And Pierre felt that this view obliged him.

XIII

In the night of the sixth to seventh of October, a movement of departure began among the French: kitchens and sheds were broken up, carts were loaded, and troops and baggage trains moved off.

At seven o’clock in the morning, a French convoy, in field uniform, in shakos, with muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in front of the sheds, and lively French talk, interspersed with oaths, rolled along the whole line.

In the shed, everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only waiting for the order to leave. The sick soldier Sokolov, pale, thin, with blue circles around his eyes, sat in his place, the only one unshod and undressed, staring questioningly, with eyes prominent in his emaciated face, at his comrades, who paid no attention to him, moaning softly and regularly. Clearly, what made him moan was not so much his suffering—he was sick with bleeding diarrhea—as fear and grief at being left alone.

Pierre, belted with a rope and shod in shoes Karataev had made for him out of leather from a tea sack that a Frenchman had brought to mend his soles, went over to the sick man and squatted down in front of him.

“Come now, Sokolov, they’re not leaving altogether! They’ve got a hospital here. Maybe you’ll be better off than we are,” said Pierre.

“Oh, Lord! It’s the death of me! Oh, Lord!” the soldier moaned more loudly.

“I’ll ask them again right now,” said Pierre, and he got up and went to the door of the shed. As he was going to the door, the corporal who had offered Pierre his pipe the day before was coming to it from outside with two soldiers. The corporal and the soldiers were in field uniform, with knapsacks and shakos with buckled chin straps, which altered their familiar faces.

The corporal was coming to the door to close it by order of his superiors. The prisoners had to be counted before being let out.

“Caporal, que fera-t-on du malade?…”*705 Pierre began; but as he was saying it, he wondered whether this was the corporal he knew or some other unknown man: so unlike himself the corporal was at that moment. Besides that, just as Pierre was saying it, there came the noise of drums on both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre’s words and, uttering a senseless oath, slammed the door. The shed became semi-dark; on both sides there was a sharp noise of drums that drowned out the sick man’s moans.

“Here it is!…Here it is again!” Pierre said to himself, and an involuntary chill ran down his spine. In the corporal’s altered face, in the sound of his voice, in the arousing and engulfing noise of the drums, Pierre recognized that mysterious, indifferent force that made people kill their own kind against their will, that force the effect of which he had seen during the execution. To fear, to try to escape that force, to turn with requests or admonitions to the people who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew that now. One had to wait and endure. Pierre did not go back to the sick man or turn to look at him. He stood by the door of the shed frowning silently.

When the door of the shed was opened and the prisoners, like a herd of sheep, crushing one another, crowded in the doorway, Pierre pushed his way ahead of them and went up to that same captain who,