War and Peace Ch. 272: The Machinery of Justice

Leo Tolstoy

The Machinery of Justice

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Summary

The officer and soldiers who arrested Pierre treated him with hostility and yet with respect, still unsure whether this big man in a peasant coat might be someone important after the fight over the child. Next morning the relief saw only prisoner Number 17, detained by order of the Higher Command. They noticed his French and his meditative stare, then put him with the other suspects because an officer needed the separate room. The Russians confined with him were of the lowest class. Recognising a gentleman who spoke French, they avoided him and made fun of him, which made Pierre sad.

On the third day he was taken with the others before a French general with a white moustache, two colonels, and men wearing scarves. The questions, like trial questions generally, left the essence aside and formed a channel meant to lead to conviction. Whenever Pierre said anything that did not fit, they cut him off. He answered that he had been restoring a child saved from the flames, that he had protected a woman, that he had gone out to see what was happening in Moscow. They had not asked where he was going, but why he was found near the fire, and who he was. He would not give his name. The flushed general marked it down as bad, very bad.

On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski rampart. Pierre and thirteen others were moved to a merchant's coach house near the Crimean bridge. Smoke hung over the city; he looked at the fires with horror without yet grasping what the burning of Moscow meant. From French talk he learned they all awaited a decision from the marshal, a high and mysterious power whose name the soldiers would not make clear. Those first days, before the second examination on the eighth of September, were the hardest of all for him.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Reading Trial Theater

Pierre becomes No. 17 while judges channel questions away from child rescue toward conviction. Essence excluded is guilt assumed.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: the French judges

The questions never ask why a man carried a child out of fire. They ask why he was near it, who he is, and they cut off whatever will not run toward guilt: a channel built to protect the verdict from the person. Pierre's namelessness is marked very bad because a man without a rank cannot be filed, only condemned.

Continue this thoughtThe Essay Is How the Novel Refuses a Steering Mind

Coming Up in Chapter 273

On the eighth of September an officer, a very important one judging by the respect the guards show him, enters the coach house where the prisoners are. Holding a paper, he calls over all the Russians there, naming Pierre as the man who does not give his name, then orders them decently dressed before they are taken to the marshal.

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Chapter 272

The Machinery of Justice

The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was taken. In their attitude toward him could still be felt both uncertainty as to who he might be—perhaps a very important person—and hostility as a result of their recent personal conflict with him. But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for the new guard—both officers and men—he was not as interesting as he had been to his captors; and in fact the guard of the second day did not recognize in this big,…

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The Machinery of Justice

Summary

Why This Matters