lize the danger and the difficult
position of the Russian people. There were the same receptions and
balls, the same French theater, the same court interests and service
interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the very highest circles were
attempts made to keep in mind the difficulties of the actual position.
Stories were whispered of how differently the two Empresses behaved
in these difficult circumstances. The Empress Marya, concerned for
the welfare of the charitable and educational institutions under her
patronage, had given directions that they should all be removed to
Kazan, and the things belonging to these institutions had already been
packed up. The Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions
she would be pleased to give--with her characteristic Russian patriotism
had replied that she could give no directions about state institutions
for that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally
was concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg.

At Anna Pavlovna's on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of the
battle of Borodino, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which was
to be the reading of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when sending
the Emperor an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was regarded as a model
of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince Vasili himself, famed for
his elocution, was to read it. (He used to read at the Empress'.) The
art of his reading was supposed to lie in rolling out the words, quite
independently of their meaning, in a loud and singsong voice alternating
between a despairing wail and a tender murmur, so that the wail fell
quite at random on one word and the murmur on another. This reading,
as was always the case at Anna Pavlovna's soirees, had a political
significance. That evening she expected several important personages who
had to be made ashamed of their visits to the French theater and aroused
to a patriotic temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna
Pavlovna, not yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room,
did not let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general
conversation.

The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess Bezukhova.
She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously, had missed
several gatherings of which she was usually ornament, and was said to be
receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated Petersburg doctors who
usually attended her had entr