hem. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.

"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
tea?" asked his valet.

Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
question--one so important that he took no notice of what went on around
him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to Petersburg
earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at this station,
but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it was a matter of
indifference whether he remained there for a few hours or for the rest
of his life.

The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling Torzhok
embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without changing
his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his spectacles unable
to understand what they wanted or how they could go on living without
having solved the problems that so absorbed him. He had been engrossed
by the same thoughts ever since the day he returned from Sokolniki after
the duel and had spent that first agonizing, sleepless night. But now,
in the solitude of the journey, they seized him with special force. No
matter what he thought about, he always returned to these same questions
which he could not solve and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was
as if the thread of the chief screw which held his life together were
stripped, so that the screw could not get in or out, but went on turning
uselessly in the same place.

The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his excellency to
wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let his excellency
have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying and only wanted
to get more money from the traveler.

"Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad
for another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he needs
money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a thrashing
for letting a private traveler have the courier horses. But the officer
thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as possible. And I,"
continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I considered myself injured,
and Louis XVI was executed because they considered him a criminal, and
a year later they executed those