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Updated: June 21, 2025
Pierre did not know why, but since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an effort to go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning with which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and when he smelled the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than before, Pierre moved farther away and did not think about him.
He was tried, knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as Karataev put it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia. The old man was living as a convict, submitting as he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God for death. Well, one night the convicts were gathered just as we are, with the old man among them.
That search for an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in Karataev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than in the Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons.
A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to them, which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into boots and shirts for them. "Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly folded shirt. Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at work, was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot.
I arrived; it was a big house with wings and a garden.... Matrona was waiting for me at the bend of the road; she tried to say a word to me, but she could only kiss her hand and turn away. Well, so I went into the hall and asked if the mistress were at home?... And a tall footman says to me: "What name shall I say?" I answered, "Say, brother, Squire Karataev has called on a matter of business."
"Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely trying to imagine Karataev's opinion on the subject. "He would not have understood... yet perhaps he would." "I love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully, awfully!" "No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after reflection. "What he would have approved of is our family life.
Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he remained for four weeks. When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures to him except Platon Karataev, who always remained in his mind a most vivid and precious memory and the personification of everything Russian, kindly, and round.
A year after my meeting with Karataev, I happened to go to Moscow. One day, before dinner, for some reason or other I went into a cafe in the Ohotny row an original Moscow cafe. In the billiard-room, across clouds of smoke, I caught glimpses of flushed faces, whiskers, old-fashioned Hungarian coats, and new-fangled Slavonic costumes.
And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into someone's copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper, had been tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier. "Well, lad," and a smile changed the tone of his voice "we thought it was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If it had not been for my sin, my brother would have had to go as a soldier.
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