sackful of letters to parents."

Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to his father. Pierre
took that letter, and Rostopchin also gave him the Emperor's appeal to
Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders, and his own
most recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders, Pierre found in
one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and rewarded, the name of
Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St. George's Cross of the Fourth Class for
courage shown in the Ostrovna affair, and in the same order the name
of Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the command of a regiment of
Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind the Rostovs of Bolkonski,
Pierre could not refrain from making them happy by the news of their
son's having received a decoration, so he sent that printed army order
and Nicholas' letter to the Rostovs, keeping the appeal, the bulletin,
and the other orders to take with him when he went to dinner.

His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the latter's tone of anxious
hurry, the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how badly
things were going in the army, the rumors of the discovery of spies in
Moscow and of a leaflet in circulation stating that Napoleon promised
to be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn, and the talk of the
Emperor's being expected to arrive next day--all aroused with fresh
force that feeling of agitation and expectation in Pierre which he had
been conscious of ever since the appearance of the comet, and especially
since the beginning of the war.

He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done so
had he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society of
Freemasons to which he was bound by oath and which preached perpetual
peace and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact that when he
saw the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform and were talking
patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take the step. But the chief
reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the army lay in the
vague idea that he was L'russe Besuhof who had the number of the beast,
666; that his part in the great affair of setting a limit to the
power of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous things had been
predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought not to undertake
anything, but wait for what was bound to come to pass.

CHAPTER XX

A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs that day, as usual