in
Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of the
order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in reaction
against the worsening of their position they were all particularly
animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences, of amusing
scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and avoided all talk of
their present situation.

The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in the
sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon from the
rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray
haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night had not yet
come. Pierre got up and left his new companions, crossing between the
campfires to the other side of the road where he had been told the
common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On
the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered him back.

Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him and
dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the
cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly he
burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured laughter, so loud that
men from various sides turned with surprise to see what this strange and
evidently solitary laughter could mean.

"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: "The soldier
did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive.
What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!..." and he laughed
till tears started to his eyes.

A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing at
all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther away from
the inquisitive man, and looked around him.

The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the
crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the
red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light
sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen
before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond
those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance
lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling
stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that is within me,
and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all that and