““who was it that had really sentenced him to death? Not the men on the commission that had first examined him—not one of them had wished to or, evidently, could have done it. It was not Davout, who had looked at him in so human a way. In another moment Davout would have realized that he was doing wrong, but just then the adjutant had come in and interrupted him. The adjutant, also, had evidently had no evil intent though he might have refrained from coming in. Then who was executing him, killing him, depriving him of life—him, Pierre, with all his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And Pierre felt that it was no one. It was a system—a concurrence of circumstances. A system of some sort was killing him—Pierre—depriving him of life, of everything, annihilating him.””
