Chapter 15 Chapter fifteen

Military supplies, captured soldiers and the marshal's train were all stationed in the village of Shamshevo.Everyone sat around the fire.Pierre approached the fire, ate some roasted horse meat, lay down with his back to the fire, and fell asleep at once.He fell asleep again as in Mozhaisk after Borodino. Real events merged with the dream again, and someone else, himself or someone else, spoke to him of thoughts, even the same thoughts that had been spoken to him in Mozhaisk. "Life is everything. Life is God. Everything is changing and moving, and this movement is God. As long as there is life, there is the joy of feeling God. To love life is to love God."

More difficult and happier than all is to love this life in suffering, in the suffering of the innocent. "Karatayev!" Pierre thought of him. Suddenly, as if in a movie, Pierre recalled in his mind a long-forgotten, benevolent old teacher who taught him geography in Switzerland. "Wait a minute," said the old man, showing Pierre a celestial globe.This is an active, shaking ball without a certain proportion.The surface of the sphere is densely packed with dots next to each other.These dots are moving, constantly changing positions, sometimes a few are combined into one, and sometimes one is divided into several.Every point expands to the utmost to occupy the largest space, while other points also expand to the utmost to exclude it, sometimes eliminate it, and sometimes combine with it.

"This is life," said the old teacher. "How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "Why didn't I know that before?" "God is in the middle, and each point expands to reflect itself to the maximum. It grows, merges, shrinks, disappears from the surface, sinks into the abyss, and rises again. This is him, that is Karataev , you see, he spreads out and disappears again. - Vousavez compris, monenfant." said the teacher. "Vousavez compris, sacrenom," cried a voice, and Pierre awoke. He leaned over and sat up.A Frenchman crouched by the fire, pushed aside a captive, took a butcher with meat on it, and roasted it over the fire.His sleeves were rolled up, his hands were bulging with veins, covered with hair, his skin was red, and his fingers were stubby. He flexibly rotated the cleaning rod.His brows were furrowed, and his brown face was sullen, clearly visible in the light of the reddish coals.

"Caluiestbiengal... Brigand. Va!" He turned quickly to a soldier behind him. -------- ① French: You understand, my child. ②French: You get it, damn it. ③ French: He is the same anyway... a bandit, yes! The soldier turned his blower and cast a cool glance at Pierre.Pierre turned his face away and looked into the darkness.One prisoner, the one pushed away by the French, was sitting by the fire beating something with his hands.Pierre took a closer look and recognized the snow-green puppy sitting beside the soldier wagging its tail. "Ah, you're here?" said Pierre, "Ah, Platon..." He hadn't finished what he had begun.

All of a sudden, the smokey past flashed in my mind: the gaze from Platon sitting under the tree, the gunshots from that place, the barking of the dog, and the two Frenchmen who ran past him with a smile. The criminal facial expression, the smoking gun, thinking of Karataev, whom he would never see in this bivouac, trying to find out if Karataev had been killed, but, right here For a split second, without knowing why, he remembered the summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish girl on the balcony of his house in Kyiv.Instead of connecting all the memories of the day and drawing conclusions from them, Pierre closed his eyes, and the summer nature mingled with memories of swimming and flowing balls of liquid, and he sank into the water, The water covered his head.

Before sunrise, he was awakened by loud gunshots and shouts.The Frenchman ran past him. "Lescosaques!" cried a Frenchman, and a minute later Pierre was surrounded by Russians. -------- ① French: Cossack. For some time Pierre did not understand what was going on, and he heard the joyful weeping of his companions around him. "Brothers! My dear ones!" cried the old soldiers, crying and embracing the Cossacks and hussars.The hussars and Cossacks surrounded the captives, giving them clothes, boots, and bread. Pierre sat among them, weeping loudly, unable to speak a word in his agitation, and embracing the first A soldier who walked up to him was crying and kissing furiously.

Dolokhov was standing by the gate of a ruined house, and the disarmed Frenchmen passed by.The Frenchmen, agitated by what had just happened, chattered loudly among themselves; and when they passed Dolokhov, and saw him whipping his boots with a riding whip and watching them with stern eyes, they fell silent. up.On the other side stood a Cossack from Dolokhov's department, counting the prisoners.Make a mark on the door every time you count to a hundred. "How many?" asked Dolokhov, counting the captive Cossacks. "Two hundred," replied the Cossack. "Filez, filez," Dolokhov kept saying, a phrase he had learned from the French.As soon as his gaze met that of his captive, his eyes suddenly burst into a cruel light.

-------- ①French: Go fast, go fast. Several Cossacks carried the body of Petya Rostov to the grave dug in the garden, and Denisov took off his hat and followed sullenly.