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PIERRE had hardly put his head on the pillow when he felt that he was
dropping asleep. But all of a sudden he heard, almost with the distinctness of
reality, the sound of the boom, boom, boom of the cannon, the groans and shrieks
and dull thud of the falling shell, smelt the blood and powder; and the feeling
of horror, of the dread of death came over him. He opened his eyes in a panic,
and put his head out from the cloak. All was quiet in the yard. The only sound
came from a servant of some sort talking with the porter at the gate, and
splashing through the mud. Over Pierre's head, under the dark, wooden eaves, he
heard pigeons fluttering, startled by the movement he had made in sitting up.
The whole yard was pervaded by the strong smell of a tavern—full of peaceful
suggestion and soothing relief to Pierre—the smell of hay, of dung, and of tar.
Between two dark sheds he caught a glimpse of the pure, starlit sky.
“Thank God, that is all over!” thought Pierre, covering his head up again.
“Oh, how awful terror is, and how shamefully I gave way to it! But
they…they were firm and calm all the while up to the end …” he thought.
They, in Pierre's mind, meant the soldiers, those who had been on the
battery, and those who had given him food, and those who had prayed to the holy
picture. They—those strange people, of whom he had known nothing
hitherto—they stood out clearly and sharply in his mind apart from all
other people.
“To be a soldier, simply a soldier!” thought Pierre as he fell asleep. “To
enter with one's whole nature into that common life, to be filled with what
makes them what they are. But how is one to cast off all that is superfluous,
devilish in one's self, all the burden of the outer man? At one time I might
have been the same. I might have run away from my father as I wanted to. After
the duel with Dolohov too I might have been sent for a soldier.”
And into Pierre's imagination flashed a picture of the dinner at the club, at
which he had challenged Dolohov, then the image of his benefactor at Torzhok.
And there rose before his mind a solemn meeting of the lodge. It was taking
place at the English Club. And some one he knew, some one near and dear to him,
was sitting at the end of the table. “Why, it is he! It is my benefactor. But
surely he died?” thought Pierre. “Yes, he did die, but I didn't know he was
alive. And how sorry I was when he died, and how glad I am he is alive again!”
On one side of the table were sitting Anatole, Dolohov, Nesvitsky, Denisov, and
others like them (in Pierre's dream these people formed as distinct a class
apart as those other men whom he had called them to himself), and those
people, Anatole and Dolohov, were loudly shouting and singing. But through their
clamour the voice of his benefactor could be heard speaking all the while, and
the sound of his voice was as weighty and as uninterrupted as the din of the
battlefield, but it was pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what
his benefactor was saying, but he knew (the category of his ideas, too, was
distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness, of the possibility of
being like them. And they with their simple, good, plucky faces
were surrounding his benefactor on all sides. But though they were kindly, they
did not look at Pierre; they did not know him. Pierre wanted to attract their
notice, and to speak to them. He got up, but at the same instant became aware
that his legs were bare and chill.
He felt ashamed, and put his arm over his legs, from which his cloak had in
fact slipped off. For an instant Pierre opened his eyes as he pulled up the
cloak, and saw the same roofs, and posts, and yard, but it was now full of
bluish light, and glistening with dew or frost.
“It's getting light,” thought Pierre. “But that's not the point. I want to
hear and understand the benefactor's words.”
He muffled himself in the cloak again, but the masonic dinner and his
benefactor would not come back. All that remained were thoughts, clearly
expressed in words, ideas; some voice was speaking, or Pierre was
thinking.
When he recalled those thoughts later, although they had been evoked by the
impressions of that day, Pierre was convinced that they were uttered by some one
outside himself. It seemed to him that he had never been capable of thinking
those thoughts and expressing them in that form in his waking moments.
“The most difficult thing is the subjection of man's will to the law of God,”
said the voice. “Simplicity is the submission to God; there is no escaping from
Him. And they are simple. They do not talk, but act. A word
uttered is silver, but unuttered is golden. No one can be master of anything
while he fears death. And all things belong to him who fears it not. If it were
not for suffering, a man would know not his limits, would know not himself. The
hardest thing” (Pierre thought or heard in his dream) “is to know how to unite
in one's soul the significance of the whole. To unite the whole?” Pierre said to
himself. “No, not to unite. One cannot unite one's thoughts, but to
harness together all those ideas, that's what's wanted. Yes, one must
harness together, harness together,” Pierre repeated to himself with
a thrill of ecstasy, feeling that those words, and only those words, expressed
what he wanted to express, and solved the whole problem fretting him.
“Yes, one must harness together; it's time to harness…”
“We want to harness the horses; it's time to harness the horses, your
excellency! Your excellency,” some voice was repeating, “we want to harness the
horses; it's time…”
It was the groom waking Pierre. The sun was shining full in Pierre's face. He
glanced at the dirty tavern yard; at the well in the middle of it soldiers were
watering their thin horses; and waggons were moving out of the gate.
He turned away with repugnance, and shutting his eyes, made haste to huddle
up again on the seat of the carriage. “No, I don't want that; I don't want to
see and understand that; I want to understand what was revealed to me in my
sleep. Another second and I should have understood it all. But what am I to do?
To harness, but how to harness all together?” And Pierre felt with horror that
the whole meaning of what he had seen and thought in his dream had slipped
away.
The groom, the coachman, and the porter told Pierre that an officer had come
with the news that the French were advancing on Mozhaisk and our troops were
retreating.
Pierre got up, and ordering the carriage to be got out and to drive after
him, crossed the town on foot.
The troops were marching out, leaving tens of thousands of wounded behind.
The wounded could be seen at the windows of the houses, and were crowding the
yards and streets. Screams, oaths, and blows could be heard in the streets about
the carts which were to carry away the wounded. Pierre put his carriage at the
service of a wounded general of his acquaintance, and drove with him to Moscow.
On the way he was told of the death of his brother-in-law, Anatole, and of the
death of Prince Andrey.
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