Page 2083 - war-and-peace

Chapter XII

As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects
of the physical privation and strain he had suffered as pris-
oner until after they were over. After his liberation he reached
Orel, and on the third day there, when preparing to go to
Kiev, he fell ill and was laid up for three months. He had what
the doctors termed ‘bilious fever.’ But despite the fact that the
doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to
drink, he recovered.
Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre’s mind by all
that happened to him from the time of his rescue till his ill-
ness. He remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy
and now snowy, internal physical distress, and pains in his
feet and side. He remembered a general impression of the
misfortunes and sufferings of people and of being worried
by the curiosity of officers and generals who questioned him,
he also remembered his difficulty in procuring a conveyance
and horses, and above all he remembered his incapacity to
think and feel all that time. On the day of his rescue he had
seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same day he had learned
that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodino
for more than a month had recently died in the Rostovs’
house at Yaroslavl, and Denisov who told him this news also
mentioned Helene’s death, supposing that Pierre had heard
of it long before. All this at the time seemed merely strange to

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