“Thank God!” he said. “My wife has told me all about it.” He put one arm round Pierre, the other round his daughter. “My dear boy! Ellen! I am very, very glad.” His voice quavered. “I loved your father … and she will make you a good wife … God’s blessing on you! …” He embraced his daughter, then Pierre again, and kissed him with his elderly lips. Tears were actually moist on his cheeks. “Aline, come here,” he called.

The princess went in and wept too. The elderly lady also put her handkerchief to her eye. They kissed Pierre, and he several times kissed the hand of the lovely Ellen. A little later they were again left alone.

“All this had to be so and could not have been otherwise,” thought Pierre, “so that it’s no use to inquire whether it was a good thing or not. It’s a good thing because it’s definite, and there’s none of the agonising suspense there was before.” Pierre held his betrothed’s hand in silence, and gazed at the heaving and falling of her lovely bosom.

“Ellen!” he said aloud, and stopped. “There’s something special is said on these occasions,” he thought; but he could not recollect precisely what it was that was said on these occasions. He glanced into her face. She bent forward closer to him. Her face flushed rosy red.

“Ah, take off those … those …” she pointed to his spectacles.

Pierre took off his spectacles, and there was in his eyes besides the strange look people’s eyes always have when they remove spectacles, a look of dismay and inquiry. He would have bent over her hand and have kissed it. But with an almost brutal movement of her head, she caught at his lips and pressed them to her own. Pierre was struck by the transformed, the unpleasantly confused expression of her face.

“Now it’s too late, it’s all over, and besides I love her,” thought Pierre.

“I love you!” he said, remembering what had to be said on these occasions. But the words sounded so poor that he felt ashamed of himself.

Six weeks later he was married, and the lucky possessor of a lovely wife and millions of money, as people said; he took up his abode in the great, newly decorated Petersburg mansion of the Counts Bezuhov.