I was wanting to see him on my own account, too. He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is now on the staff.”

The count was overjoyed at Anna Mihalovna’s undertaking one part of his commissions, and gave orders for the carriage to be brought round for her.

“Tell Bezuhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Brought his wife with him?” he asked.

Anna Mihalovna turned up her eyes, and an expression of profound sadness came into her face.

“Ah, my dear, he’s very unhappy,” she said. “If it’s true what we have been hearing, it’s awful. How little did we think of this when we were rejoicing in happiness! and such a lofty, angelic nature, that young Bezuhov! Yes, I pity him from my soul, and will do my utmost to give him any consolation in my power.”

“Why, what is the matter?” inquired both the Rostovs, young and old together.

Anna Mihalovna heaved a deep sigh.

“Dolohov, Marya Ivanovna’s son,” she said in a mysterious whisper, “has, they say, utterly compromised her. He brought him forward, invited him to his house in Petersburg, and now this! … She has come here, and that scapegrace has come after her,” said Anna Mihalovna. She wished to express nothing but sympathy with Pierre, but in her involuntary intonations and half smile, she betrayed her sympathy with the scapegrace, as she called Dolohov. “Pierre himself, they say, is utterly crushed by his trouble.”

“Well, any way, tell him to come to the club—it will divert his mind. It will be a banquet on a grand scale.”

On the next day, the 3rd of March, at about two in the afternoon, the two hundred and fifty members of the English Club and fifty of their guests were awaiting the arrival of their honoured guest, the hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagration.

On receiving the news of the defeat of Austerlitz, all Moscow had at first been thrown into bewilderment. At that period the Russians were so used to victories, that on receiving news of a defeat, some people were simply incredulous, while others sought an explanation of so strange an event in exceptional circumstances of some kind. At the English Club, where every one of note, every one who had authentic information and weight gathered together, during December, when the news began to arrive, not a word was said about the war and about the last defeat; it was as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who took the lead in conversation at the club, such as Count Rostoptchin, Prince Yury Vladimirovitch Dolgoruky, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemsky, did not put in an appearance at the club, but met together in their intimate circles at each other’s houses.

That section of Moscow society which took its opinions from others (to which, indeed, Count Ilya Andreivitch Rostov belonged) remained for a short time without leaders and without definite views upon the progress of the war. People felt in Moscow that something was wrong, and that it was difficult to know what to think of the bad news, and so better to be silent. But a little later, like jurymen coming out of their consultation room, the leaders reappeared to give their opinion in the club, and a clear and definite formula was found. Causes had been discovered to account for the fact—so incredible, unheard-of, and impossible—that the Russians had been beaten, and all became clear, and the same version was repeated from one end of Moscow to the other. These causes were: the treachery of the Austrians; the defective commissariat; the treachery of the Pole Przhebyshevsky and the Frenchman Langeron; the incapacity of Kutuzov; and (this was murmured in subdued tones) the youth and inexperience of the Emperor, who had put faith in men of no character and ability. But the army, the Russian army, said every one, had been extraordinary, and had performed miracles of valour. The soldiers, the officers, the generals—all were heroes. But the hero among heroes was Prince Bagration, who had distinguished himself in his Schöngraben engagement and in the retreat from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column in good order, and had succeeded in repelling during the whole day an enemy twice as numerous. What contributed to Bagration’s