rusion of Pierre's nonmilitary figure in a white hat made an
unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at him with
surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior artillery
officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over to Pierre as if
to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at him with curiosity.

A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only just
out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two guns
entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.

"Sir," he said, "permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not be
here."

The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre.
But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the white hat
was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench
with a shy smile or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced up
and down the battery under fire as calmly as if he were on a boulevard,
their feeling of hostile distrust gradually began to change into a
kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers feel for their dogs,
cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that live with the
regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their family, adopted him,
gave him a nickname ("our gentleman"), and made kindly fun of him among
themselves.

A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around
with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown up.

"And how's it you're not afraid, sir, really now?" a red-faced,
broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a set
of sound, white teeth.

"Are you afraid, then?" said Pierre.

"What else do you expect?" answered the soldier. "She has no mercy, you
know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards. One can't
help being afraid," he said laughing.

Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.
They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and the
discovery that he did so delighted them.

"It's the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it's wonderful!
There's a gentleman for you!"

"To your places!" cried the young officer to the men gathered round
Pierre.

The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the first or
second time and therefore treated both his superiors and the men with
great precision and formality.

The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing more
inten