Chapter 20 Chapter Twenty

Early on the twenty-fifth Pierre left Mozhaisk.Out of the city is a winding and steep hillside. There is a church on the hill on the right, where the bell is ringing for worship.Pierre got out of the carriage and went on foot.Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down the hill, and ahead of the regiment was a group of singers.Oncoming was a convoy of carts carrying soldiers wounded in yesterday's battle.The farmers driving the carts shouted and cracked their whips, and kept running on both sides of the carts.Each cart, with three or four wounded soldiers sitting or lying down, bumped on the steep stone road.The wounded soldier was wrapped in rags, pale, with his mouth tightly shut, frowning, and he grabbed the railing of the car and bumped and collided with each other.Almost all the wounded looked at Pierre's white hat and green tailcoat with childlike curiosity.

Pierre's coachman shouted angrily at the wounded convoy and told them to step aside.The cavalry regiment sang straight down the hill toward Pierre's carriage, blocking the road.Pierre stopped and was pushed to the side of the leveled mountain road.The hillside blocked the sun, and the low-lying road was dark and cold and damp, while above Pierre was the clear August morning sky, and the church bells rang merrily.A wrecked wagon was parked on the side of the road next to Pierre, and the bark-shoeed wagon driver ran up to it, out of breath, shoved a stone into the rimless rear wheel, and then gave the stopped wagon Horse grooming leather harness.

An old wounded soldier, with one arm hanging, followed the cart on foot, grasping the cart with his large good hand, and turned to look at Pierre. "I said, fellow, are we to be thrown here? Or sent to Moscow?" he asked. Pierre was deep in thought, and he didn't hear anyone asking him. He looked now at the cavalry regiment approaching the wounded cart, and at the cart beside him. Two wounded soldiers were sitting and one was lying on the cart. with.One of them who was sitting probably had a wound on his face and cheek, his whole head was wrapped in rags, and one cheek was swollen, like a child's head.His mouth and nose were on one side.This wounded soldier was looking at the church and making the sign of the cross; another, a younger recruit, fair-haired, with a bloodless face, was looking at Pierre with a friendly smirk; the third was lying on his stomach, His face out of sight, cavalry singers passed by the cart.

"Hey, where are you... Stubborn person..." "You are in a foreign land..." They sang the soldier's dance.As if in response to them, the jingling of bells on the hillside continued to sound, which did not have a joyous meaning.Besides, there was a different kind of joy: the top of the opposite hill was bathed in scorching sunshine, but down the hill, beside the wounded cart, near the panting pony, where Pierre stood, was damp, dark and sad. The swollen-faced soldier looked angrily at the cavalry singers. "Ho, dandy!" he said reproachfully. "In these days, we see not only soldiers, but also farmers! Farmers are also driven to the battlefield," the soldier standing behind the car said to Pierre with a wry smile. Let's rush up together, in one word—for Moscow. They will fight to the end." Even though the soldier couldn't speak clearly, Pierre understood what he meant.Nod in agreement.

The road cleared, Pierre went down the hill and drove on. Pierre looked left and right along the way, looking for familiar faces, but all he saw were unfamiliar faces of soldiers of different branches, and they all stared in amazement at his white hat and green tuxedo. After walking four versts, he met his first acquaintance, and greeted him cheerfully.This acquaintance was a military medical officer.He was coming towards Pierre in a van, with a young doctor sitting next to him.The medical officer, recognizing Pierre, stopped the Cossack who was sitting in the front seat instead of the coachman.

"Count! Your Excellency, why are you here!" asked the doctor. "I want to see..." "That's right, that's right, there will be something to see..." Pierre got out of the car and stood talking to the doctor, explaining his intention to fight. The doctor advised Bezukhov to go directly to the Honorable. "When the war started, why did you come to this place where no one knows and can't be found." He said, and gave his young colleague a wink. "Anyway, the honor always knows you, he You'll be treated kindly. Let's do it, old man," said the doctor.

The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry. "That's what you think... But I want to ask you, where is the position?" said Pierre. "Position?" said the doctor. "That's not my business. After Tatarinovo, there are many people digging trenches. You can see it when you climb up that high hill," said the doctor. "Can you see it from there? . . . if you..." But the doctor interrupted him and walked towards the caravan. "I could have sent you off, but, really, I've got too much to do here (he gestures at the throat), and I've got to go to the commander of the regiment. What's going on with us . . . you know, Earl, there will be a big battle tomorrow. An army of 100,000 people will have at least 20,000 wounded, but our stretchers, hospital beds, nurses, and doctors are not enough for 6,000 people. We have 10,000 large vehicles car, but something else is needed; that's up to you."

Among the tens of thousands of living, healthy, young, old, who gazed at his hat with delighted curiosity, twenty thousand were doomed to be wounded or dead (perhaps the very ), Pierre could not help being surprised by this strange idea. "They may die tomorrow, but why should they think of anything else?" Due to some unfathomable associations, he suddenly and vividly remembered the slopes of Mozhaisk, the carts carrying the wounded soldiers, and the churches. The bells, the afterglow of the setting sun, and the singing of the cavalry. "When the cavalry go to battle, they meet wounded soldiers on the road, but they don't think at all about the fate that awaits them, but just glance at the wounded soldiers and pass by. Twenty thousand of them are doomed to die, but they Surprised by my hat! How strange!" thought Pierre on the way to Tatarinovo.

On the left side of the road was a landowner's house, where were parked some carriages, covered carts, orderlies, and sentries.The honor lived there.But when Pierre arrived, no one else was there, hardly a single staff member.They all went to church.Pierre got into the carriage and went on, towards Gorky. Pierre's car went up the mountain and reached a small street in the mountain village, where he saw for the first time the peasant reserve army, wearing hats with crosses on their heads and white shirts, talking and laughing loudly, with great interest. Bobo, sweating profusely, was working on a tall grassy mound on the right side of the road.

Many of them were digging, others were moving earth on the gangway with wheelbarrows, and still others were standing still. Two officers stood on the mound directing them.Pierre saw that these peasants were obviously still happy to be a soldier. He thought of the wounded soldiers in Mozhaisk, and he began to understand that the soldier said that the old people and the surnames are all one qi. Chong · up · go to the meaning of this sentence.These bearded peasants working in the field, with their queer heavy boots, their sweaty necks, some with their open sloping necklines, their tanned collarbones peeking out from under their shirts, all this was more beautiful than Pierre's. What he had seen and heard in the past made him feel more forcefully the seriousness and importance of the present moment.