“Thank God, there is no more of that!” he thought, covering up his head again. “Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I yielded to it! But they … they were steady and calm all the time, to the end …” thought he.
They , in Pierre’s mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before the icon. They , those strange men he had not previously known, stood out clearly and sharply from everyone else.
“To be a soldier, just a soldier!” thought Pierre as he fell asleep, “to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them what they are. But how to cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could have run away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with Dólokhov.” And the memory of the dinner at the English Club when he had challenged Dólokhov flashed through Pierre’s mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at Torzhók. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the lodge presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at the English Club and someone near and