Chapter 9 Chapter nine

In the prison to which Pierre was taken, the officers and soldiers who arrested him treated him with hostility, but respect.Their attitude toward him suggested that they still had misgivings because they didn't know who he was (whether he was a big shot), and they were hostile because their fight with him had just passed. But when the guards changed the next morning, Pierre felt that the new guard, officers and soldiers, was not as interested in him as his captors.Indeed, from this big fat man in a farmer's coat, the guards the next day could not see the real person who had desperately fought with the looters and the soldiers who escorted him, and uttered bold words to save the child, but only I saw a Russian prisoner No. 17 who was arrested and imprisoned by the order of his superiors for some reason.If there was anything special about Pierre, it was only in his lack of timidity, in his pensive manner, and in his conversations he spoke French so well that the Frenchman was amazed.Nevertheless, on this day he was locked up with other suspects because the cell he occupied was taken by an officer.

All the Russians imprisoned with Pierre were of the lowest class.After they recognized his status as a lord, they spoke French to him and alienated him even more.Pierre dejectedly let them laugh at him. The next night, Pierre learns that the men (whom he may also include) will be tried for arson.On the third day, Pierre and others were taken into a house where a French general with a white beard sat.Presented and discussed the materialist, two colonels and several other Frenchmen with ribbons on their arms.These Frenchmen asked Pierre and others, with the precision and affirmation that they thought they could transcend human weakness (as is usually the case with the accused): Who is he?Where have you been?what purpose?Questions like these.

These questions, like all questions asked in the courtroom, set aside the essence of the matter and exclude the possibility of revealing its essence, and their purpose is only to choose a channel through which the judges hope that the defendant's answer will flow out, and the answer will flow out. The defendant leads to the intended goal, which is to sentence him for his crime.Whenever the accused began to speak words inappropriate for the purposes of the sentence, the ditch was removed and the water could go wherever it pleased.Pierre was more aware of the inexplicable mood experienced by the accused in all courtrooms:—that was the object of the questions being asked of him.He felt that it was only out of tolerance, or out of politeness, that the method of using a false ditch was used.He knew that he was under the power of these men, and that alone had brought him here, and that alone gave them the right to ask him to answer questions, and that they had met for the sole purpose of convicting him.Now that there is power and the intention to convict, there is no need for such means as trials and courts.Obviously, any answer can be used as a confession.Asked what he was doing when he was arrested, he replied somewhat tragically that he was handing over the qu'ilavaitsauvedesflammes (rescued from the fire) child to his parents.Ask him why he fought with the robbers?Pierre replied that he was protecting the woman, that it is everyone's duty to protect an insulted woman, and that ... he was stopped: it had nothing to do with the merits.Ask him why he went into the courtyard of the burning house, which the witness saw?He replied that he wanted to see what was happening in Moscow.He was interrupted again: instead of asking where he was going, he asked why he was staying near the fire?Who is he again? —the first question was repeated, and he had said he would not answer it.Now he is still answering, saying that he does not want to talk about this issue.

"Write it down, it's not good. Very bad." The white bearded general said sternly with his reddish face. On the fourth day, the Zubowski Fortress caught fire. Pierre and thirteen others were escorted to the carriage house of a merchant in the Crimean Shoal.Passing through the streets, Pierre was smothered by the smoke that seemed to cover the whole city.There was fire on all sides.Pierre didn't understand the significance of the burning of Moscow at that time, but watched in horror as it burned everywhere. Pierre spent another four days in the carriage shed of the house on the coast of the Crimea, during which time he learned from conversations with the French soldiers that all the detainees were waiting every day for a decision to be made by the generalissimo at any time. Decide.Who was the generalissimo, Pierre could not hear from the soldiers.To soldiers, the Grand Marshal was apparently a somewhat mystical power representing the highest ranks.

The period leading up to September 8th, the day before the second trial of the prisoner, felt the worst for Pierre.