Four weeks had passed since Pierre was taken prisoner. Though the French offered to move him from the men's shed to the officers', he stayed where he had first been put. In burned Moscow he experienced almost the extreme limits of privation a man can endure, yet thanks to a physical strength he had not known he possessed, and because the hardships came so gradually that he could not say when they began, he endured the position not only lightly but joyfully. Just then he obtained the tranquillity he had formerly striven in vain to reach, the inner harmony that had impressed him in the soldiers at Borodino. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in town dissipations, in wine, in heroic self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning, and all those quests had failed. Now, without thinking about it, he had found that peace through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognised in Karataev.
The executions had washed away thoughts that once seemed important. It did not occur to him to think of Russia, the war, politics, or Napoleon. Those things were no business of his. Russia and summer weather are not bound together, he thought, repeating Karataev. The plan of killing Napoleon and the cabalistic number of the beast now seemed ridiculous. Anger with his wife and anxiety for his name seemed amusing. What concern of his was it that that woman led the life she preferred, or that they might learn the prisoner's name was Count Bezukhov? He now agreed with Prince Andrew that happiness could only be negative, but without Andrew's bitterness. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of needs, and freedom to choose an occupation seemed the highest happiness. Eating when hungry, sleeping when sleepy, warmth when cold, a human voice when he wished to talk: now that he was deprived of all this, those simple goods constituted perfect happiness.
All his daydreams turned on the time when he would be free. Yet for the rest of his life he spoke with enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of irrecoverable joyful sensations, and chiefly of the inner freedom he experienced only then. On the first dawn he saw the cupolas of the New Convent of the Virgin still dark, hoarfrost on dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, crows flying from Moscow, then the sun's rim, and felt a new joy and strength that grew as hardships increased. Fellow prisoners soon formed a high opinion of him: his languages, the French respect, his three-ruble officer's allowance which he gave away, the nails he pressed into hut walls, his gentleness, and his capacity for sitting still and thinking. Qualities that had hindered him in the world here gave him almost the status of a hero, and he felt that their opinion placed responsibilities upon him.
Coming Up in Chapter 292
The French evacuation begins on the night between the sixth and seventh of October: kitchens and sheds are dismantled and carts loaded. At seven in the morning a French convoy in shakos stands in front of the sheds. Inside, everyone is ready except the sick soldier Sokolov, pale, thin, and barefoot, who sits moaning in his place.
