Kabanata Kabanata 273 · 第273章

On the eighth of September an officer—a very important one judging by

the respect the guards showed him—entered the coach house where the

prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on the staff, was holding

a paper in his hand, and called over all the Russians there, naming

Pierre as “the man who does not give his name.” Glancing indolently and

indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered the officer in charge

to have them decently dressed and tidied up before taking them to the

marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers arrived and Pierre with

thirteen others was led to the Virgin’s Field. It was a fine day, sunny

after rain, and the air was unusually pure. The smoke did not hang low

as on the day when Pierre had been taken from the guardhouse on the

Zúbovski rampart, but rose through the pure air in columns. No flames

were seen, but columns of smoke rose on all sides, and all Moscow as far

as Pierre could see was one vast charred ruin. On all sides there were

waste spaces with only stoves and chimney stacks still standing, and

here and there the blackened walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed

at the ruins and did not recognize districts he had known well. Here and

there he could see churches that had not been burned. The Krémlin, which

was not destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and

the belfry of Iván the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin

glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly.

These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the

Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate this

holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to be

seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when they saw

the French.

It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but in

place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed, Pierre

unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order had been

established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the looks of

the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and gaily, were

escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the looks of an

important French official in a carriage and pair driven by a soldier,

whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry sounds of regimental

music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt and realized

it especially from the list of prisoners the French officer had read out

when he came that morning. Pierre had been taken by one set of soldiers

and led first to one and then to another place with dozens of other men,

and it seemed that they might have forgotten him, or confused him with

the others. But no: the answers he had given when questioned had come

back to him in his designation as “the man who does not give his name,”

and under that appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were

now leading him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces

that he and all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted

and that they were being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself

to be an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose

action he did not understand but which was working well.

He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the Virgin’s

Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not far from the

convent. This was Prince Shcherbátov’s house, where Pierre had often

been in other days, and which, as he learned from the talk of the

soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of Eckmühl (Davout).

They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one.

Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass gallery,

an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a long low

study at the door of which stood an adjutant.

Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end of

the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently consulting

a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without raising his eyes,

he said in a low voice:

“Who are you?”

Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word. To him

Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious for his

cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern schoolmaster

who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre felt that every

instant of delay might cost him his life; but he did not know what

to say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at his first

examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was dangerous and

embarrassing. So he was silent. But before he had decided what to do,

Davout raised his head, pushed his spectacles back on his forehead,

screwed up his eyes, and looked intently at him.

“I know that man,” he said in a cold, measured tone, evidently

calculated to frighten Pierre.

The chill that had been running down Pierre’s back now seized his head

as in a vise.

“You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you...”

“He is a Russian spy,” Davout interrupted, addressing another general

who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed.

Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his voice Pierre

rapidly began:

“No, monseigneur,” he said, suddenly remembering that Davout was a duke.

“No, monseigneur, you cannot have known me. I am a militia officer and

have not quitted Moscow.”

“Your name?” asked Davout.

“Bezúkhov.”

“What proof have I that you are not lying?”

“Monseigneur!” exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended but in a pleading

voice.

Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked

at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war

and law, that look established human relations between the two men. At

that moment an immense number of things passed dimly through both their

minds, and they realized that they were both children of humanity and

were brothers.

At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head from the

papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre

was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without

burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a

human being. He reflected for a moment.

“How can you show me that you are telling the truth?” said Davout

coldly.

Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his regiment and the

street where the house was.

“You are not what you say,” returned Davout.

In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing proofs of the

truth of his statements.

But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported something to Davout.

Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought, and began

buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had quite forgotten Pierre.

When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he jerked his head in

Pierre’s direction with a frown and ordered him to be led away. But

where they were to take him Pierre did not know: back to the coach house

or to the place of execution his companions had pointed out to him as

they crossed the Virgin’s Field.

He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting another

question to Davout.

“Yes, of course!” replied Davout, but what this “yes” meant, Pierre did

not know.

Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went, whether it was far, or

in which direction. His faculties were quite numbed, he was stupefied,

and noticing nothing around him went on moving his legs as the others

did till they all stopped and he stopped too. The only thought in his

mind at that time was: who was it that had really sentenced him to

death? Not the men on the commission that had first examined him—not one

of them wished to or, evidently, could have done it. It was not Davout,

who had looked at him in so human a way. In another moment Davout would

have realized that he was doing wrong, but just then the adjutant had

come in and interrupted him. The adjutant, also, had evidently had no

evil intent though he might have refrained from coming in. Then who was

executing him, killing him, depriving him of life—him, Pierre, with all

his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And

Pierre felt that it was no one.

It was a system—a concurrence of circumstances.

A system of some sort was killing him—Pierre—depriving him of life, of

everything, annihilating him.