PRINCE ANDREY was on that bright August evening lying propped on his elbow in a broken-down barn in the village of Knyazkovo, at the further end of the encampment of his regiment. Through a gap in the broken wall he was looking at the line of thirty-year-old pollard birches in the hedge, at the field with sheaves of oats lying about it, and at the bushes where he saw the smoke of camp-fires, at which the soldiers were doing their cooking.

Cramped and useless and burdensome as his life seemed now to Prince Andrey, he felt nervously excited and irritable on the eve of battle, just as he had felt seven years earlier before Austerlitz.

He had received and given all orders for the next day's battle. He had nothing more to do. But thoughts—the simplest, most obvious, and therefore most awful—would not leave him in peace. He knew that the battle next day would be the most awful of all he had taken part in, and death, for the first time, presented itself to him, not in relation to his actual manner of life, or to the effect of it on others, but simply in relation to himself, to his soul, and rose before him simply and awfully with a vividness that made it like a concrete reality. And from the height of this vision everything that had once occupied him seemed suddenly illumined by a cold, white light, without shade, without perspective or outline. His whole life seemed to him like a magic lantern, at which he had been looking through the glass and by artificial light. Now he saw suddenly, without the glass, in the clear light of day, those badly daubed pictures. “Yes, yes, there are they; there are the cheating forms that excited torments and ecstasies in me,” he said to himself, going over in imagination the chief pictures of the magic lantern of his life, looking at them now in the cold, white daylight of a clear view of death. “These are they, these coarsely sketched figures which seemed something splendid and mysterious. Glory, the good society, love for a woman, the fatherland—what grand pictures they used to seem to me, with what deep meaning they seemed to be filled! And it is all so simple, so colourless and coarse in the cold light of the day that I feel is dawning for me.” The three chief sorrows of his life held his attention especially. His love for a woman, his father's death, and the invasion of the French—now in possession of half of Russia. “Love! … That little girl, who seemed to me brimming over with mysterious forces. How I loved her! I made romantic plans of love, of happiness with her! O simple-hearted youth!” he said aloud bitterly. “Why, I believed in some ideal love which was to keep her faithful to me for the whole year of my absence! Like the faithful dove in the fable, she was to pine away in my absence from her! And it was all so much simpler. … It is all so horribly simple and loathsome!

“My father, too, laid out Bleak Hills, and thought it was his place, his land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came along, and without even knowing of his existence, swept him away like a chip out of his path, and his Bleak Hills laid in the dust, and all his life with it brought to nought. Princess Marya says that it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, since he is not and never will be? He will never come back again! He is not! So for whom is it a trial? Fatherland, the spoiling of Moscow! But to-morrow I shall be killed; and not by a Frenchman even, maybe, but by one of our own men, like the soldier who let off his gun close to my ear yesterday; and the French will come and pick me up by my head and my heels and pitch me into a hole that I may not stink under their noses; and new conditions of life will arise, and I shall know nothing of them, and I shall not be at all.”

He gazed at the row of birch-trees with their motionless yellows and greens, and the white bark shining in the sun. “To die then, let them kill me to-morrow, let me be no more … let it all go on, and let me be at an end.” He vividly pictured his own absence from that life. And those birch-trees, with their light and shade, and the curling clouds and the smoke of the fires, everything around seemed suddenly transformed into something weird and menacing. A shiver ran down his back. Rising quickly to his feet, he went out of the barn, and began to walk about.

He heard voices behind the barn.

“Who's there?” called Prince Andrey.

The red-nosed Captain Timohin, once the officer in command of Dolohov's company, now in the lack of officers promoted to the command of a battalion, came shyly into the barn. He was followed by an adjutant and the paymaster of the regiment.

Prince Andrey got up hurriedly, listened to the matters relating to their duties that the officers had come to him about, gave a few instructions, and was about to dismiss them, when he heard a familiar, lisping voice behind the barn.

“Que diable!” said the voice of some one stumbling over something.

Prince Andrey, peeping out of the barn, saw Pierre, who had just hit against a post lying on the ground, and had almost fallen over. Prince Andrey always disliked seeing people from his own circle, especially Pierre, who reminded him of all the painful moments he had passed through on his last stay at Moscow.

“Well!” he cried. “What fate has brought you? I didn't expect to see you.”

While he said this there was in his eyes and his whole face more than coldness, positive hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached the barn with the greatest eagerness, but now, on seeing Prince Andrey's face, he felt constrained and ill at ease.

“I have come … you know … simply … I have come … it's interesting,” said Pierre, who had so many times already that day repeated that word “interesting” without meaning it. “I wanted to see the battle!”

“Yes, yes; but your mason brethren, what do they say of war? How would they avert it?” said Prince Andrey sarcastically. “Well, tell me about Moscow. And my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?” he asked seriously.

“Yes. Julie Drubetskoy told me so. I went to call, but missed them. They had started for your Moscow estate.”

八月二十五日，晴朗的八月傍晚，安德烈公爵在克尼亚兹科沃村的一间破旧棚屋里支着臂肘躺着，他的团就驻在村边。他从破墙的裂缝看见沿着篱笆下面的一排白桦树（枝桠都被砍掉了，树龄有六十年）和一片堆放着弄乱了的燕麦垛的田地，以及上面冒着炊烟（士兵们在烧饭）的灌木丛。

安德烈公爵觉得，现在他的生活尽管憋闷、痛苦，无人关心，但仍然像七年前在奥斯特利茨战役前夕那样，心情激动而焦躁。

他已经接到并已发出明天作战的有关命令。这时他无事可做。但是最简单、最清晰的思绪，因而也是最可怕的思绪，使他不得安宁。他知道，明天的战斗将是他参加过的一切战斗中最激烈的一次，他生平第一次生动地、几乎确信无疑地，而且单纯地恐怖地想到了死亡的可能，这死亡的可能与尘世生活完全无关，也不去考虑它对别人会产生什么影响，它只是关系到他自己、关系到他的灵魂。从这个意念的高度来看，从前使他痛苦和担心的一切，忽然被一道寒冷的白光照亮了，那道白光既无阴影，也无远景，也无轮廓的差别。他觉得整个人生有如一盏魔灯，长期以来，他透过玻璃，借助人工的照明来看魔灯里的东西。现在他突然不是透过玻璃，而是在明晃晃的白昼中看见画得很差劲的图片。“是的，是的，这就是曾经使我激动和赞赏、并且折磨过我的那些虚幻的形象，”他自言自语，在想象中一一再现他的人生魔灯中的主要画面。此时是在白昼的寒光中，在清楚地意识到死亡的时刻观看这些画面，这就是那些曾经认为美丽和神秘的拙劣粗糙的画像。

“荣誉，社会的幸福，对女人的爱情，甚至祖国——我过去觉得这些图景是多么壮丽，蕴藏着多么深刻的思想！而今天（我觉得它是为我降临的）在寒冷的白光下，这一切却如此简单、苍白和粗糙。”他此时的注意力特别集中在他生平三大不幸之事上面。他对女人的爱情，父亲的去世和占领半个俄国的法国人的入侵。“爱情！……那个我觉得充满了神秘力量的小姑娘。我多么爱她啊！我曾经制定了关于爱情以及和她共同生活的幸福的、富有诗意的计划。啊，我这个天真的孩子！”他愤恨地高声说。“当然啦！我曾相信理想的爱情，在我整年不在的时候，她对我仍忠贞不渝！就像寓言中的温柔多情的小鸽子，她一定因为和我离别而憔悴。——而这一切都想得太简单了……太简单了，讨厌！”

“我父亲也曾建设童山，并认为那是他的地方，他的土地，他的空气，他的农民，可是拿破仑来了，不承认他的存在，像从路上踢开一块木片似的把他踢开了，把他的童山以及他的全部生活都摧毁了。而玛丽亚公爵小姐说，这是来自上天的考验。既然他已经死了，再不会复活，这考验又为了什么呢？他永远不再存在了！不再存在了！那么这对谁是一个考验呢？祖国，莫斯科的毁灭！明天我就要被打死了——甚至可能不是被法国人，而是被自己人打死，就像昨天有一个士兵在我身边放了一枪，于是法国人就会过来拖起我的腿和头，把我扔进坑里，以免我在他们鼻子底下发臭。然后新的生活条件形成了，别人也就习惯了那些生活条件，而我却不会知道它们了，我将不存在了。”

他望了望那排白桦树，黄的、绿的树叶一动不动，雪白的树皮在阳光下熠熠闪耀。“死，明天我被杀死，我就不存在了……这些东西都存在，可是我不存在了。”他生动地想象他不存在时生活中的情景。这些闪光的、投出阴影的白桦树，这些曲卷的彩云，这些篝火的青烟——他觉得周围一切都改了样子，似乎都变得恐怖了。他的脊背禁不住打了一阵寒战。于是赶快站起来，走出棚屋，在外面徘徊着。

突然他听到棚屋后面有说话声。

“谁在哪儿？”安德烈公爵吆喝了一声。是红鼻子上尉季莫欣，曾是多洛霍夫的连长，由于缺少军官，现在当了营长。他胆怯地走进棚屋。在地后面还走进了一个副官和团部的军需官。

安德烈公爵急忙站好，听军官们向他报告公事，然后对他们作了一些指示，正要让他们走时，屋后传来熟悉的低语声。

“Que　diable！”①一个人被什么绊了一下，说。

①法语：见鬼！

安德烈公爵从棚屋里往外看，看见了向他走来的皮埃尔，地上一根杆子几乎把他绊倒。

安德烈公爵看见同一阶层的人，特别是看见皮埃尔总觉得不痛快，因为这令他忆起了前次莫斯科之行的痛苦时刻。“噢哟，是你呀！”他说，“哪阵风把你吹来了？真想不到。”

当他说这话时，他的眼神和脸上的表情不仅冷淡而且含有敌视的意味，皮埃尔立刻察觉了这一点。他本是兴高采烈地向棚屋走来的，但一见到安德烈公爵脸上的表情，立刻变得局促不安，不自在起来。

“我来……嗯……您知道……我来……我觉得很有趣。”皮埃尔说，他这一天已经多次无意识地重复“有趣”这个字眼了。“我想看一看战斗的情况。”

“是的，是的，共济会员们对战争有什么看法？怎样才能防止战争啊！”安德烈公爵讥讽地说，“莫斯科怎么样？我家里的人怎么样？他们终于都到莫斯科了吗？”他认真地问道。

“他们都到了。是朱莉·德鲁别茨卡娅告诉我的。我去看过他们，但是没有遇见。他们到莫斯科近郊的庄园去了。”