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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 Zubovski 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.
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