‘Not once, never. Every one always imagines that to be a prisoner equivalent to being on a visit to Napoleon. I never saw, never even hea anything about him. I was in much lower company.’
Supper was over, and Pierre, who had at first refused to talk about ]| captivity, was gradually drawn into telling them about it.
‘But it is true that you stayed behind to kill Napoleon?’ Natasha ask: him with a slight smile. ‘I guessed that at the time when we met you ' the Suharev Tower: do you remember?’
Pierre owned that it was so; and from that question was led on 1 Princess Marya’s, and still more by Natasha’s, questions to give a <• tailed account of his adventures.
At first he told his story with that tone of gentle irony that he alwci had now towards men and especially towards himself. But as he came) describe the horrors and sufferings he had seen, he was drawn on unawar, and began'to speak with the suppressed emotion of a man living again 1 imagination through the intense impressions of the past.
Princess Marya looked from Pierre to Natasha with a gentle smile. 1 all he told them she saw only Pierre and his goodness. Natasha, her hel supported in her hand, and her face changing continually with the sto. watched Pierre, never taking her eyes off him, and was in imaginat i passing through all he told her with him. Not only her eyes, but her - clamations and the brief questions she put showed Pierre that she und- stood from his words just what he was trying to convey by them. It vs evident that she understood, not only what he said, but also what e would have liked to say and could not express in words. The episode f the child and of the woman in whose defence he was taken prison, Pierre described in this way. ‘It was an awful scene, children abandon!, some in the midst of the fire . . . Children were dragged out before 7 eyes . . . and women, who had their things pulled off them, earriis torn off . . .’
Pierre flushed and hesitated. ‘Then a patrol came up and all who we not pillaging, all the men, that is, they took prisoner. And me with the.’
‘I am sure you are not telling us all; I am sure you did somethii,’ said Natasha, and after a moment’s pause, ‘something good.’
Pierre went on with his story. When he came to the execution, he wod have passed over the horrible details of it, but Natasha insisted on ;s leaving nothing out.
Pierre was beginning to tell them about Karataev; he had risen from the ble and was walking up and down, Natasha following him with her res.
‘No/ he said, stopping short in his story, ‘you cannot understand what learned from that illiterate man — that simple creature.’
‘No, no, tell us/ said Natasha. ‘Where is he now?’
‘He was killed almost before my eyes.’
And Pierre began to describe the latter part of their retreat, Karataev’s ness (his voice shook continually) and then his death.
Pierre told the tale of his adventures as he had never thought of them >fore. He saw now as it were a new significance in all he had been rough. He experienced now in telling it all to Natasha that rare happi- ;ss given to men by women when they listen to them — not by clever omen, who, as they listen, are either trying to remember what they are Id to enrich their intellect and on occasion to repeat it, or to adapt what told them to their own ideas and to bring out in haste the clever com- ents elaborated in their little mental factory. This rare happiness is ven only by those real women, gifted with a faculty for picking out and .similating all that is best in what a man shows them. Natasha, though >rself unconscious of it, was all rapt attention; she did not lose one word, le quaver of the voice, one glance, one twitching in the facial muscles, ie gesture of Pierre’s. She caught the word before it was uttered and bore straight to her open heart, divining the secret import of all Pierre’s dritual travail.
Princess Marya understood his story and sympathised with him, but she as seeing now something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw e possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre. And iis idea, which struck her now for the first time, filled her heart with adness.
It was three o’clock in the night. The footmen, with melancholy and were faces, came in with fresh candles, but no one noticed them.
Pierre finished his story. With shining, eager eyes Natasha still gazed tently and persistently at him, as though she longed to understand mething more, that perhaps he had left unsaid. In shamefaced and ippy confusion, Pierre glanced at her now and then, and was thinking iat to say now to change the subject. Princess Marya was mute. It did >t strike any of them that it was three o’clock in the night, and time to in bed.
