sseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince Andrew
was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending the
winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.

So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya and
Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.

BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12

CHAPTER I

After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any apparent
cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as before. Firmly
convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by his benefactor,
and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner man, to which he had
devoted himself with such ardor--all the zest of such a life vanished
after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and the death of Joseph
Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost at the same time.
Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a brilliant wife who now
enjoyed the favors of a very important personage, acquaintance with all
Petersburg, and his court service with its dull formalities. And this
life suddenly seemed to Pierre unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping
a diary, avoided the company of the Brothers, began going to the Club
again, drank a great deal, and came once more in touch with the bachelor
sets, leading such a life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary
to speak severely to him about it. Pierre felt that she was right, and
to avoid compromising her went away to Moscow.

In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded and
fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as soon as,
driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with innumerable
tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons, the Kremlin Square
with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh drivers and hovels of
the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who desired nothing, hurried
nowhere, and were ending their days leisurely; when he saw those old
Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls, and the English Club, he felt himself
at home in a quiet haven. In Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and
dirty as in an old dressing gown.

Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received Pierre
like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready awaiting him.
For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest, most intellectual,
merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a heedless, genial nobleman of
the old Russian type.