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On the eighth of September an officer- a very important one
judging by the respect the guards showed him- entered the coach
house where the prisoners were. This officer, probably someone
on the staff, was holding a paper in his hand, and called over
all the Russians there, naming Pierre as "the man who does
not give his name." Glancing indolently and indifferently
at all the prisoners, he ordered the officer in charge to have
them decently dressed and tidied up before taking them to the
marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers arrived and Pierre
with thirteen others was led to the Virgin's Field. It was a fine
day, sunny after rain, and the air was unusually pure. The smoke
did not hang low as on the day when Pierre had been taken from
the guardhouse on the Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure
air in columns. No flames were seen, but columns of smoke rose
on all sides, and all Moscow as far as Pierre could see was one
vast charred ruin. On all sides there were waste spaces with only
stoves and chimney stacks still standing, and here and there the
blackened walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed at the ruins
and did not recognize districts he had known well. Here and there
he could see churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which
was not destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers
and the belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent
of the Virgin glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly
clearly. These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the
feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no
one to celebrate this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins,
and the few Russians to be seen were tattered and frightened people
who tried to hide when they saw the French.
It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed,
but in place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed,
Pierre unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French
order had been established over this ruined nest. He felt this
in the looks of the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly
and gaily, were escorting him and the other criminals; he felt
it in the looks of an important French official in a carriage
and pair driven by a soldier, whom they met on the way. He felt
it in the merry sounds of regimental music he heard from the left
side of the field, and felt and realized it especially from the
list of prisoners the French officer had read out when he came
that morning. Pierre had been taken by one set of soldiers and
led first to one and then to another place with dozens of other
men, and it seemed that they might have forgotten him, or confused
him with the others. But no: the answers he had given when questioned
had come back to him in his designation as "the man who does
not give his name," and under that appellation, which to
Pierre seemed terrible, they were now leading him somewhere with
unhesitating assurance on their faces that he and all the other
prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted and that they were
being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself to be an
insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose
action he did not understand but which was working well.
He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of
the Virgin's Field, to a large white house with an immense garden
not far from the convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov's house,
where Pierre had often been in other days, and which, as he learned
from the talk of the soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal,
the Duke of Eckmuhl (Davout).
They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one
by one. Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through
a glass gallery, an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar
to him, into a long low study at the door of which stood an adjutant.
Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further
end of the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently
consulting a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without
raising his eyes, he said in a low voice:
"Who are you?"
Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word.
To him Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious
for his cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern
schoolmaster who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre
felt that every instant of delay might cost him his life; but
he did not know what to say. He did not venture to repeat what
he had said at his first examination, yet to disclose his rank
and position was dangerous and embarrassing. So he was silent.
But before he had decided what to do, Davout raised his head,
pushed his spectacles back on his forehead, screwed up his eyes,
and looked intently at him.
"I know that man," he said in a cold, measured tone,
evidently calculated to frighten Pierre.
The chill that had been running down Pierre's back now seized
his head as in a vise.
"You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you..."
"He is a Russian spy," Davout interrupted, addressing
another general who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed.
Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his
voice Pierre rapidly began:
"No, monseigneur," he said, suddenly remembering
that Davout was a duke. "No, monseigneur, you cannot have
known me. I am a militia officer and have not quitted Moscow."
"Your name?" asked Davout.
"Bezukhov."
"What proof have I that you are not lying?"
"Monseigneur!" exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended
but in a pleading voice.
Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds
they looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart
from conditions of war and law, that look established human relations
between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things
passed dimly through both their minds, and they realized that
they were both children of humanity and were brothers.
At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head
from the papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by
numbers, Pierre was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have
shot him without burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but
now he saw in him a human being. He reflected for a moment.
"How can you show me that you are telling the truth?"
said Davout coldly.
Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his regiment
and the street where the house was.
"You are not what you say," returned Davout.
In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing proofs
of the truth of his statements.
But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported something
to Davout.
Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought, and
began buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had quite forgotten
Pierre.
When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he jerked
his head in Pierre's direction with a frown and ordered him to
be led away. But where they were to take him Pierre did not know:
back to the coach house or to the place of execution his companions
had pointed out to him as they crossed the Virgin's Field.
He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting another
question to Davout.
"Yes, of course!" replied Davout, but what this
"yes" meant, Pierre did not know.
Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went, whether
it was far, or in which direction. His faculties were quite numbed,
he was stupefied, and noticing nothing around him went on moving
his legs as the others did till they all stopped and he stopped
too. The only thought in his mind at that time was: who was it
that had really sentenced him to death? Not the men on the commission
that had first examined him- not one of them wished to or, evidently,
could have done it. It was not Davout, who had looked at him in
so human a way. In another moment Davout would have realized that
he was doing wrong, but just then the adjutant had come in and
interrupted him. The adjutant, also, had evidently had no evil
intent though he might have refrained from coming in. Then who
was executing him, killing him, depriving him of life- him, Pierre,
with all his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was
doing this? And Pierre felt that it was no one.
It was a system- a concurrence of circumstances.
A system of some sort was killing him- Pierre- depriving him
of life, of everything, annihilating him.
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