Kabanata Kabanata 312 · 第312章

“À vos places!” * suddenly cried a voice.

* “To your places.”

A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something

joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the

prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left came

smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the prisoners at a

trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension people feel at the

approach of those in authority. The prisoners thronged together and were

pushed off the road. The convoy formed up.

“The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!” and hardly had the

sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses rattled

by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat with a

tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of the

marshals. His eye fell on Pierre’s large and striking figure, and in

the expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre thought he

detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy.

The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with a

red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several officers

formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their faces all

looked excited and worried.

“What did he say? What did he say?” Pierre heard them ask.

While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in a

crowd, and Pierre saw Karatáev whom he had not yet seen that morning.

He sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On his face,

besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday while telling

the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently, there was now an

expression of quiet solemnity.

Karatáev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with

tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say something to

him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself. He made as if he

did not notice that look and moved hastily away.

When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round. Karatáev

was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch tree and two

Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look round again

but went limping up the hill.

From behind, where Karatáev had been sitting, came the sound of a shot.

Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that he

had not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to

Smolénsk—a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And he

again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one of

whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale, and

in the expression on their faces—one of them glanced timidly at

Pierre—there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of

the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and

remembered that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt while

drying it at the fire and how they had laughed at him.

Behind him, where Karatáev had been sitting, the dog began to howl.

“What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?” thought Pierre.

His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided looking

back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog was howling,

just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their faces.