ur beloved country."

Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count listened
with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.

Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father and
now at Pierre.

Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The countess
shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn expression
in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that the danger
threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshin, with a sarcastic
smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make fun of anything that
gave him the opportunity: Sonya's reading, any remark of the count's, or
even the manifesto itself should no better pretext present itself.

After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes the
Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious nobility,
Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the attention that was
being paid to her, read the last words:

"We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that Capital
and in other parts of our realm for consultation, and for the direction
of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy's path and those
freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the ruin he
hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may Europe delivered
from bondage glorify the name of Russia!"

"Yes, that's it!" cried the count, opening his moist eyes and sniffing
repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his nose; and he
added, "Let the Emperor but say the word and we'll sacrifice everything
and begrudge nothing."

Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on the
count's patriotism, Natasha jumped up from her place and ran to her
father.

"What a darling our Papa is!" she cried, kissing him, and she again
looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned to her
with her better spirits.

"There! Here's a patriot for you!" said Shinshin.

"Not a patriot at all, but simply..." Natasha replied in an injured
tone. "Everything seems funny to you, but this isn't at all a joke...."

"A joke indeed!" put in the count. "Let him but say the word and we'll
all go.... We're not Germans!"

"But did you notice, it says, 'for consultation'?" said Pierre.

"Never mind what it's for...."

At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came up
to his father with a very flushed face and s