1 Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.
2 I won't inflict corporal punishment on you," he says, "or put you in the rack.
3 You'd look fine, said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent under the weight of his knapsack.
4 He said he would not have been taken, it was not his fault but the corporal's who had sent him to seize some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were there.
5 I am not merely civil to him but obey him like a corporal, though I am his senior.
6 And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.
7 Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the corporal told him that nearly all the troops were starting and there ought to be an order about the prisoners that day.
8 Sokolov, one of the soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the corporal that something should be done about him.
9 And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away.
10 Some of the prisoners who had heard Pierre talking to the corporal immediately asked what the Frenchman had said.
11 Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him a pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers.
12 The corporal and soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had metal straps, and these changed their familiar faces.
13 The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door.
14 But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that moment.
15 The corporal frowned at Pierre's words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door.