The Price of Standing Up — War and Peace

Pierre got back with the child to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the Povarskoy and at first did not recognise the place, so crowded was it now with people and goods dragged from the houses. Russian families had taken refuge there; French soldiers in a variety of clothing stood among them. He hurried to restore the daughter to her mother and go to save someone else, still glowing with youth and determination. The little girl had grown quiet and clung to his coat like a small wild animal. He could not find the civil servant or the woman in the black coat.

He noticed, without meaning to, a Georgian or Armenian family: a handsome old man in a new sheepskin coat, an old woman of the same type, and a very young woman who seemed to him the perfection of Oriental beauty, sitting on bundles in a rich satin cloak and lilac shawl, looking at the ground from under long lashes, aware of her beauty and afraid because of it. Russians gathered round Pierre and the child. An old deacon and a pockmarked peasant woman decided the mother must be Mary Nikolaevna, who had gone into the garden when the French, those wolves, swooped down. Pierre was no longer listening. A nimble little Frenchman in a blue coat tied with rope, nightcap on his head and barefoot, had seized the old Armenian by the legs and was pulling off his boots. A tall, lank, fair-haired soldier in a woman's frieze gown, blue trousers, and torn Hessian boots stood staring at the young woman, then took his hands from his pockets and seized her by the neck.

Pierre thrust the screaming child at the peasant woman and ran. The marauder was already tearing off her necklace; she clutched her throat and screamed. Pierre threw the soldier aside. The man fell, got up, and ran. His barefoot comrade drew a sword. Pierre, in a transport of rage, knocked him down and hammered him with his fists. A crowd shouted approval. Then a mounted patrol of French Uhlans trotted round the corner and surrounded them. Pierre remembered nothing afterwards but beating and being beaten, his hands bound, and a search. Lieutenant, he has a dagger, were the first words he understood. He would not say who he was. He was their prisoner: take him. An interpreter, a French salesman from a Moscow shop, thought he did not look like a common man. The officer said he looked very much like an incendiary. The pockmarked woman came forward with the little girl. Pierre, as if intoxicated, said she was bringing him his daughter, whom he had just saved from the flames. He did not know how the aimless lie escaped him. He walked between the soldiers with resolute, triumphant steps. The patrol, sent out by Durosnel's order to stop pillage and catch incendiaries, arrested five more Russian suspects. Of all of them Pierre was thought the most suspicious. That night, in a large house on the Zubov Rampart used as a guardhouse, he was placed apart under strict guard.