After Pierre and his wife turned against each other and expressed their attitude, they set off for Petersburg.At that time, there were no post horses on the Torzhok station, and perhaps the postmaster was unwilling to supply them.Pierre had to wait.He lay fully clothed on the leather sofa in front of the round table, stretched his thighs in thick leather boots to the table, and meditated. "Excuse me, do you want to move the box in? Excuse me, do you want to make the bed and make tea?" the servant asked. Pierre did not answer, because he could hear nothing and see nothing.He had been lost in thought at the previous station, and was still thinking about something so important that he paid no attention to what was going on around him.Not only was he indifferent whether he arrived in Petersburg sooner or later, or whether there was a place for him to rest at this station, but he compared the thoughts that haunted his mind: whether he stayed at this station for a few hours or Staying with it for a lifetime, he is also indifferent.

The postmaster, the postmaster's wife, the servants, the peasant woman who sold Torzhok's embroidery, all came in to help him.Pierre did not change his cross-legged position, looked at them through his spectacles, and wondered what they needed, how he could survive with his unsolved problems.But after the duel, Hetu Luoshu Confucian legends about the two books "Book of Changes" and "Hong Fan" bestowed by heaven.He walked home from the Sokolnik Forest, and spent a sleepless night that tormented him. Since that day, the same old questions haunted his mind, and at this time, in the lonely and lonely journey , and these questions gripped him even more forcefully.Whatever he started thinking about, he always came back to questions he couldn't solve, and couldn't stop asking himself.It was as if one of the main screws holding his whole life together had been turned in his head.The screw could neither go in nor come out, it was always spinning in the hollow of the same thread, and it couldn't be stopped.

The postmaster came in, bowed his head and asked his lordship carefully to wait two hours, and then call your lordship (by fate) the express stage horse.The postmaster was obviously lying, he just wanted more money from the passing passengers. "Is it good, or is it bad?" Pierre asked himself. "For me it's a good thing, for other travelers it's a bad thing, for him it's inevitable because he has nothing. An officer beat him up for it," he said. He stopped. The officer beat him because he had to go on his way. I shot Dolokhov because I thought I had been insulted. Louis XVI. was sentenced to death because he was considered a sinner. A year later, people killed the person who executed him, probably for some reason. What is good? What is bad? What should I love? What should I hate? Why was I born? Who am I? What is life? What is Death? What power governs everything?" he asked himself.None of these questions have been answered, except for one illogical answer which does not address them at all.The answer is as follows: "When you die, it is over. When you die, the truth is revealed, or rather, you stop asking questions."

But death is also terrible. Torjok's merchantwomen peddle their wares, especially goatskin slippers, in squealing voices. "I have hundreds of rubles and nowhere to spend them, but she stands here in a ragged leather jacket, looking at me with awe, giving me a scientific analysis of the nature, dynamics, progress and failure of the French Revolution in 1848," Pierre said. I thought, "Why do you need all this money? Could it really add a little bit of happiness and spiritual comfort to her? Is there anything in this world that can save her and me from being at the mercy of disaster and death?" Death brings everything to an end. Death will come today or tomorrow. Compared with eternity, it is just a momentary experience. So I pressed the idling spiral vigorously, and it was still spinning in the original place.”

His servant handed him a half-cut book—Madame Souza's epistolary novel.He began to read the accounts of Amelie Demunfeld's anguish, her struggle for virtue. "Why should she fight against the man who seduced her when she is in love with him?" he thought. "God does not give her soul desires against his will. My former wife did not Struggle, perhaps she is right. Nothing has been discovered," Pierre said to himself again, "nothing has been conceived. We only know and we know nothing. This is the height of human intelligence." Everything in himself and around him seemed to him disorganized, meaningless, and repulsive.But Pierre found a thrilling joy in his distaste for everything around him.

"I venture to ask your lordship to move a little closer, for this is his old man's place," said the postmaster, entering the room, leading a passer-by who was stranded for lack of horses.The passer-by was a solid old man with broad bones, yellow skin, and wrinkled faces.There are yin and yang opposites in things, which form the changes of things. , with gray eyebrows hanging over his piercing light gray eyes. Pierre removed his own legs from the table, got up, went to sleep on the bed prepared for him, and looked from time to time at the person who came in with a gloomy, tired face. , without looking at Pierre, took off his clothes with great difficulty with the help of the servant.The passer-by was still wearing a shabby Nanjing homespun leather jacket and a pair of felt boots on his bony feet. He sat down on the sofa and leaned his huge head with broad temples and short hair on the On the back of the sofa, he glanced at Bezukhov.Pierre was amazed by the serious, intelligent, penetrating eyes.He longed to talk to a passer-by, but when he was about to ask him about the journey, the passer-by closed his eyes, folded his old wrinkled hands, and wore a ring on one finger. The large cast-iron ring engraved with a skull pattern sat motionless, perhaps resting, and Pierre felt that the passer-by might be thinking about something in peace.The passer-by's servant was also a wrinkled, yellow-skinned old man, without mustache or beard, which seemed not to have been shaved, but to have never grown a beard.The nimble old servant unpacked the food box for the journey, set the tea table, and brought a boiling samovar.When everything was ready, the old passer-by opened his eyes, moved his steps, walked to the table, poured himself a cup of tea, poured another cup of tea for another beardless old man, and handed the tea to him.Pierre began to feel uneasy, and he even felt that it was necessary for him to have a conversation with this passer-by.

The servant brought back the overturned empty teacup and the uneaten candy, and asked him what he wanted. "Nothing. Pass me the book," said the passer-by.The servant handed over a book, which Pierre thought was a church book, and the passer-by immersed himself in reading.Pierre watched him.The passer-by suddenly moved the book away, put a bookmark on it to communicate, and failed in distress; Tai communicated with heaven and earth, and Anji went smoothly.It means that things are opened, closed, eyes are closed, elbows are supported on the back of the sofa, and the original posture is maintained to sit down.Pierre looked at him, and before he turned his face away, the old man opened his eyes and followed Pierre's face with firm and serious eyes.

Pierre felt ashamed and wanted to avoid this look, but the old man's bright eyes attracted him strongly.