wenty-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