His purse was always empty because it was open to
everyone.

Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent societies,
gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees, Freemasons,
churches, and books--no one and nothing met with a refusal from him, and
had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large sums from him and
taken him under their protection, he would have given everything away.
There was never a dinner or soiree at the Club without him. As soon as
he sank into his place on the sofa after two bottles of Margaux he was
surrounded, and talking, disputing, and joking began. When there
were quarrels, his kindly smile and well-timed jests reconciled the
antagonists. The Masonic dinners were dull and dreary when he was not
there.

When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly smile,
yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive off somewhere
with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the young men.
At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies, married and
unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of them, he was
equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il est charmant; il
n'a pas de sexe," * they said of him.

* "He is charming; he has no sex."

Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there were
hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow.

How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first
arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him
to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally
predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in
his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one
time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia;
then himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then
a strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the
possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the sinful
human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of perfection?
Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated his serfs?

But instead of all that--here he was, the wealthy husband of an
unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and
drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the government
a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal favorite in
Moscow society. For a long t