Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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had been filled up a command was given. Pierre was
taken back to his place, and the rows of troops on both sides of the
post made a half turn and went past it at a measured pace. The
twenty-four sharpshooters with discharged muskets, standing in the
center of the circle, ran back to their places as the companies passed
by.
Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters who ran in
couples out of the circle. All but one rejoined their companies.
This one, a young soldier, his face deadly pale, his shako pushed
back, and his musket resting on the ground, still stood near the pit
at the spot from which he had fired. He swayed like a drunken man,
taking some steps forward and back to save himself from falling. An
old, noncommissioned officer ran out of the ranks and taking him by
the elbow dragged him to his company. The crowd of Russians and
Frenchmen began to disperse. They all went away silently and with
drooping heads.
"That will teach them to start fires," said one of the Frenchmen.
Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was a soldier
who was trying to find some relief after what had been done, but was
not able to do so. Without finishing what he had begun to say he
made a hopeless movement with his arm and went away.
CHAPTER XII
After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest of the
prisoners and placed alone in a small, ruined, and befouled church.
Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered with two soldiers
and told him that he had been pardoned and would now go to the
barracks for the prisoners of war. Without understanding what was said
to him, Pierre got up and went with the soldiers. They took him to the
upper end of the field, where there were some sheds built of charred
planks, beams, and battens, and led him into one of them. In the
darkness some twenty different men surrounded Pierre. He looked at
them without understanding who they were, why they were there, or what
they wanted of him. He heard what they said, but did not understand
the meaning of the words and made no kind of deduction from or
application of them. He replied to questions they put to him, but
did not consider who was listening to his replies, nor how they
would understand them. He looked at their faces and figures, but
they all seemed to him equally meaningless.
From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders
committed by men who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the
mainspring of his life, on which everything depended and which made
everything appear alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything
had collapsed into a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though he did not
acknowledge it to himself, his faith in the right ordering of the
universe, in humanity, in his own soul, and in God, had been
destroyed. He had experienced this before, but never so strongly as
now. When similar doubts had assailed him before, they had been the
result of his own wrongdoing, and at the bottom of his heart he had
felt that relief from his despair and from those doubts was to be
found within himself. But now he felt that the universe had crumbled
before his eyes and only meaningless ruins remained, and this not by
any fault of his own. He felt that it was not in his power to regain
faith in the meaning of life.
Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something
about him interested them greatly. They were telling him something and
asking him something. Then they led him away somewhere, and at last he
found himself in a corner of the shed among men who were laughing
and talking on all sides.
"Well, then, mates... that very prince who..." some voice at the
other end of the shed was saying, with a strong emphasis on the word
who.
Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against the wall,
Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed his eyes. But as soon
as he closed them he saw before him the dreadful face of the factory
lad--especially dreadful because of its simplicity--and the faces of
the murderers, even more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he
opened his eyes again and stared vacantly into the darkness around
him.
Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of whose
presence he was first made aware by a
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