Bab Bab 272 · 第272章

The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with

hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was taken.

In their attitude toward him could still be felt both uncertainty as

to who he might be—perhaps a very important person—and hostility as a

result of their recent personal conflict with him.

But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for the

new guard—both officers and men—he was not as interesting as he had

been to his captors; and in fact the guard of the second day did not

recognize in this big, stout man in a peasant coat the vigorous person

who had fought so desperately with the marauder and the convoy and had

uttered those solemn words about saving a child; they saw in him only

No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested and detained for some reason

by order of the Higher Command. If they noticed anything remarkable

about Pierre, it was only his unabashed, meditative concentration

and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke French, which struck them as

surprisingly good. In spite of this he was placed that day with the

other arrested suspects, as the separate room he had occupied was

required by an officer.

All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the lowest class and,

recognizing him as a gentleman, they all avoided him, more especially as

he spoke French. Pierre felt sad at hearing them making fun of him.

That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably, among

them) were to be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was taken

with the others to a house where a French general with a white mustache

sat with two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on their arms.

With the precision and definiteness customary in addressing prisoners,

and which is supposed to preclude human frailty, Pierre like the others

was questioned as to who he was, where he had been, with what object,

and so on.

These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left the

essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility of that essence’s

being revealed, and were designed only to form a channel through which

the judges wished the answers of the accused to flow so as to lead to

the desired result, namely a conviction. As soon as Pierre began to say

anything that did not fit in with that aim, the channel was removed and

the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt, moreover, what the accused

always feel at their trial, perplexity as to why these questions were

put to him. He had a feeling that it was only out of condescension or a

kind of civility that this device of placing a channel was employed. He

knew he was in these men’s power, that only by force had they brought

him there, that force alone gave them the right to demand answers

to their questions, and that the sole object of that assembly was to

inculpate him. And so, as they had the power and wish to inculpate

him, this expedient of an inquiry and trial seemed unnecessary. It was

evident that any answer would lead to conviction. When asked what he

was doing when he was arrested, Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner

that he was restoring to its parents a child he had saved from the

flames. Why had he fought the marauder? Pierre answered that he “was

protecting a woman,” and that “to protect a woman who was being insulted

was the duty of every man; that...” They interrupted him, for this

was not to the point. Why was he in the yard of a burning house where

witnesses had seen him? He replied that he had gone out to see what

was happening in Moscow. Again they interrupted him: they had not asked

where he was going, but why he was found near the fire? Who was he? they

asked, repeating their first question, which he had declined to answer.

Again he replied that he could not answer it.

“Put that down, that’s bad... very bad,” sternly remarked the general

with the white mustache and red flushed face.

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

Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a merchant’s

house near the Crimean bridge. On his way through the streets Pierre

felt stifled by the smoke which seemed to hang over the whole

city. Fires were visible on all sides. He did not then realize the

significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires with

horror.

He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and

during that time learned, from the talk of the French soldiers, that all

those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any day

from the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn from the

soldiers. Evidently for them “the marshal” represented a very high and

rather mysterious power.

These first days, before the eighth of September when the prisoners were

had up for a second examination, were the hardest of all for Pierre.