Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of the shot
heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty faces of the two
Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and smoking gun, and of
Karataev's absence at this halt--and he was on the point of realizing
that Karataev had been killed, but just at that instant, he knew not
why, the recollection came to his mind of a summer evening he had spent
with a beautiful Polish lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. And
without linking up the events of the day or drawing a conclusion
from them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a vision of the country in
summertime mingled with memories of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating
globe, and he sank into water so that it closed over his head.

Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid firing.
French soldiers were running past him.

"The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of
Russians surrounded Pierre.

For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him. All
around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.

"Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!" old soldiers exclaimed, weeping, as
they embraced Cossacks and hussars.

The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered them
clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he sat
among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier who
approached him, and kissed him, weeping.

Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd
of disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had
happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed
Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched them
with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent. On the
opposite side stood Dolokhov's Cossack, counting the prisoners and
marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.

"How many?" Dolokhov asked the Cossack.

"The second hundred," replied the Cossack.

"Filez, filez!" * Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this expression
from the French, and when his eyes met those of the prisoners they
flashed with a cruel light.

* "Get along, get along!"

Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some Cossacks
who were carrying the body of Petya Rostov to a hole that had been dug
in the garden.

CHAPTER XVI

After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight of
the Fr