第 三百一十 章 · 第310章

During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been

issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners

among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party was

no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it had left

Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled the first

stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other half had gone

on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had marched in

front of the prisoners was left; they had all disappeared. The artillery

the prisoners had seen in front of them during the first days was

now replaced by Marshal Junot’s enormous baggage train, convoyed by

Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a cavalry baggage train.

From Vyázma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in three

columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder that Pierre

had noticed at their first halting place after leaving Moscow had now

reached the utmost limit.

The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead

horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments

continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again

lagging behind it.

Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the

soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run

headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and

abused each other for their causeless panic.

These three groups traveling together—the cavalry stores, the convoy of

prisoners, and Junot’s baggage train—still constituted a separate and

united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly melting away.

Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred and

twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been

captured or left behind. Some of Junot’s wagons also had been captured

or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers

from Davout’s corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned that

a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to the

prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had been

shot by the marshal’s own order because a silver spoon belonging to the

marshal had been found in his possession.

The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three hundred

and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a hundred now

remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort than even the

cavalry saddles or Junot’s baggage. They understood that the saddles and

Junot’s spoon might be of some use, but that cold and hungry soldiers

should have to stand and guard equally cold and hungry Russians who

froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case the order was to

shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but revolting. And the

escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were in,

of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering

their own plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness

and severity.

At Dorogobúzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the

prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores, several

of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away, but were

recaptured by the French and shot.

The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer prisoners

should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been abandoned.

All who could walk went together, and after the third stage Pierre had

rejoined Karatáev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had chosen

Karatáev for its master.

On the third day after leaving Moscow Karatáev again fell ill with the

fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he grew

gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know why, but

since Karatáev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an effort to

go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning with which

Karatáev generally lay down at the halting places, and when he smelled

the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than before, Pierre

moved farther away and did not think about him.

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect

but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for

happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple

human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from

superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had

learned still another new, consolatory truth—that nothing in this world

is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man

can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he

need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom

have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the

person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as

he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled

while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing

shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet

that were covered with sores—his footgear having long since fallen to

pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife—of his own free

will as it had seemed to him—he had been no more free than now when they

locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself subsequently

termed his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely felt, the worst

was the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh

was appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder

they used instead of salt was even pleasant; there was no great cold,

it was always warm walking in the daytime, and at night there were the

campfires; the lice that devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing

that was at first hard to bear was his feet.

After the second day’s march Pierre, having examined his feet by the

campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when

everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,

walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more

terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,

but thought of other things.

Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the

saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing

to another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows

superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain limit.

He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged

behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did not

think of Karatáev who grew weaker every day and evidently would soon

have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The

harder his position became and the more terrible the future, the more

independent of that position in which he found himself were the joyful

and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that came to him.