________________________________________________
_ "A 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 Karataev 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.
Karataev 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.
Karataev 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 Karataev 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
Smolensk- 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 Karataev 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. _
Read next: Book Fourteen: 1812: Chapter 15
Read previous: Book Fourteen: 1812: Chapter 13
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