《War And Peace》　Book14 　CHAPTER XIII
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

AT MIDDAY on the 22nd, Pierre was walking along the muddy, slippery road
uphill, looking at his feet and at the unevenness of the road. From time to time
he glanced at the familiar crowd around him, and then again at his feet. Both
that crowd and those feet were alike his and familiar to him. The purplish,
bandy-legged, grey dog was running merrily along at the side of the road;
sometimes picking up a hind leg, and skipping along on three paws as a sign of
content and briskness, or barking at the crows that perched on the carrion. The
grey dog was sleeker and merrier than in Moscow. All around lay the flesh of
different animals- from men to horses-in different stages of decomposition, and
the marching soldiers prevented wolves from coming near it, so that the grey dog
could feast to her heart's content.

Rain had been falling since early morning; and it seemed continually as
though in another minute it would cease and the sky would clear, when, after a
short break, the rain came on again more heavily. The road, saturated with rain,
could soak up no more, and streams flowed along the ruts.

Pierre walked, looking from side to side, counting his steps, and reckoning
them off in threes on his fingers. Inwardly addressing the rain, he said to it,
"Now then, come on then, pelt away!"

It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing at all; but somewhere deep
down his soul was pondering something grave and consolatory. That something was
the subtlest, spiritual deduction arising from his talk the night before with
Karataev.

Getting chilled by the dying fire on the previous night's halt, Pierre had
got up and moved to the next fire, which was burning better. There Platon was
sitting, with a coat put over his head, like a priest's chasuble. In his
flexible, pleasant voice, feeble now from illness, he was telling the soldiers a
story Pierre had heard already. It was past midnight, the time when Karataev's
fever usually abated, and he was particularly lively. As he drew near the fire
and heard Platon's weak, sickly voice, and saw his piteous mien in the bright
firelight, Pierre felt a pang at heart. He was frightened at his own pity for
this man, and would have gone away, but there was no other fire to go to, and
trying not to look at Platon, he sat down by it.

"Well, how is your fever?" he asked.

"How is my fever? Weep over sickness, and God won't give you death," said
Karataev, and he went back at once to the story he had begun.

"And so, brother," he went on with a smile on his thin, white face, and a
peculiar, joyful light in his eyes, "And so, brother ..."

Pierre had heard the story long before. Karataev had told it to him, about
six times already, and always with special joyful emotion. But well as Pierre
knew the story, he listened to it now as though it were something new, and the
subdued ecstasy, which Karataev evidently felt in telling it, infected Pierre
too.

It was the story of an old merchant, who had lived in good works and in the
fear of God with his family, and had made a journey one day with a companion, a
rich merchant, to Makary.

Both the merchants had put up at an inn and gone to sleep; and next day the
rich merchant had been found robbed, and with his throat cut. A knife, stained
with blood, was found under the old merchant's pillow. The merchant was tried,
sentenced to be flogged, and to have his nostrils slit-all according to the law
in due course, as Karataev said-and sent to hard labour.

"And so, brother" (it was at this point in the story that Pierre found
Karataev) "ten years or more passed by after that. The old man lives on in
prison. He submits, as is fitting; he does nothing wrong. Only he prays to God
for death. Very well. And so at night-time they are gathered together, the
convicts, just as we are here, and the old man with them. And so they fall to
talking of what each is suffering for, and how he has sinned against God. One
tells how he took a man's life, another two, another had set fire to something,
and another was a runaway just for no reason. So they began asking the old man,
'What,' they say, 'are you suffering for, grandfather?' 'I am suffering, dear
brethren,' says he, 'for my own sins, and for other men's sins. I have not taken
a life, nor taken other men's goods, save what I have bestowed on poorer
brethren. I was a merchant, dear brethren, and I had great wealth.' And he tells
them this and that, and how the whole thing had happened. 'For myself,' says he,
'I do not grieve. God has chastened me. The only thing,' says he, 'I am sorry
for my old wife and my children.' And so the old man fell a-weeping. And it so
happened that in that company there was the very man, you know, who had killed
the merchant. 'Where did it happen, grandfather?' says he. 'When and in what
month?' and so he asked him all about it. His heart began to ache. He goes up to
the old man like this-and falls down at his feet. 'You are suffering for me, old
man,' says he. 'It's the holy truth; this man is tormented innocently, for
nothing, lads,' says he. 'I did that deed,' says he, 'and put the knife under
his head when he was asleep. Forgive me, grandfather, for Christ's sake!' says
he."

Karataev paused, smiling blissfully, and gazing at the fire, as he rearranged
the logs.

"The old man, he says, 'God forgive you,' says he, 'but we are all sinners
before God,' says he. 'I am suffering for my own sins.' And he wept with bitter
tears. What do you think, darling?" said Karataev, his ecstatic smile growing
more and more radiant, as though the great charm and whole point of his story
lay in what he was going to tell now, "what do you think, darling, that murderer
confessed of himself to the police. 'I have killed six men,' says he (for he was
a great criminal), 'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Let him not
weep through my fault.' He confessed. It was written down, and a paper sent off
to the right place. The place was far away. Then came a trial. Then all the
reports were written in due course, by the authorities, I mean. It was brought
to the Tsar. Then a decree comes from the Tsar to let the merchant go free; to
give him the recompense they had awarded him. The paper comes; they fall to
looking for the old man. Where was that old man who had suffered innocently? The
paper had come from the Tsar, and they fell to looking for him." Karataev's
lower jaw quivered. "But God had pardoned him already-he was dead! So it
happened, darling!" Karataev concluded, and he gazed a long while straight
before him, smiling silently.

Not the story itself, but its mysterious import, the ecstatic gladness that
beamed in Karataev's face as he told it, the mysterious significance of that
gladnessvaguely filled and rejoiced Pierre's soul now.