nothing about him—I was in much lower company!”
Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his captivity was gradually led on to do so.
“But it’s true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?” Natásha asked with a slight smile. “I guessed it then when we met at the Súkharev tower, do you remember?”
Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by Princess Márya’s questions and especially by Natásha’s into giving a detailed account of his adventures.
At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary with him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he came to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he has lived through.
Princess Márya with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at Natásha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his goodness. Natásha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face constantly changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an attention that never wandered—evidently herself experiencing all that he described. Not only her look, but her exclamations and the brief questions she put, showed Pierre that she understood just what he wished to convey. It was clear that she understood not only what he said but also what he wished to, but could not, express in words. The account Pierre gave of the incident with the child and the woman for protecting whom he was arrested was this: “It was an awful sight—children abandoned, some in the flames … One was snatched out before my eyes …