BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07
1. CHAPTER I
After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the
Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster
would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.
"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
tea?" asked his valet.
Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
question- one so important that he took no notice of what went on
around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to
Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at
this station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it
was a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours
or for the rest of his life.
The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling
Torzhok embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without
changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his
spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could
go on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed
him. He had been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day
he returned from Sokolniki after the duel and had spent that first
agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey,
they seized him with special force. No matter what he thought about,
he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve
and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the
chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the
screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the
same place.
The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his
excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let
his excellency have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying
and only wanted to get more money from the traveler.
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