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"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.
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