1 The two first were convicts with shaven heads.
2 They all went away silently and with drooping heads.
3 The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre.
4 Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals without doffing their caps.
5 With lively curiosity everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they flew over their heads.
6 Behind, before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen with bared heads walked, ran, and bowed to the ground.
7 Among the soldiers in the shops and passages some men were to be seen in gray coats, with closely shaven heads.
8 With hurried hands the soldiers blindfolded them, drawing the sacks over their heads, and bound them to the post.
9 The hot rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind played with the hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons decorating the icon.
10 The Frenchman was about to say something, when just above their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled, and it seemed to Pierre that the French officer's head had been torn off, so swiftly had he ducked it.
11 Meanwhile still more projectiles, now with the swift sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the agreeable intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people's heads incessantly, but not one fell close by, they all flew over.
12 Evidently possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were singing, and solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white arm with the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread out his dirty fingers.