ined. Dessalles whispered to the
boy to come downstairs.

"No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay," replied
Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.

"Ma tante, please let me stay," said he, going up to his aunt.

His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary
glanced at him and turned to Pierre.

"When you are here he can't tear himself away," she said.

"I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good night!"
said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned to young
Nicholas with a smile. "You and I haven't seen anything of one another
yet... How like he is growing, Mary!" he added, addressing Countess
Mary.

"Like my father?" asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up at
Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.

Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the
children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork; Natasha
did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov rose, asked
for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from Sonya--who
sat weary but resolute at the samovar--and questioned Pierre. The
curly-headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed in a corner,
starting every now and then and muttering something to himself, and
evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he turned his curly
head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down collar, toward the
place where Pierre sat.

The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in power,
in which most people see the chief interest of home politics. Denisov,
dissatisfied with the government on account of his own disappointments
in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done in Petersburg
which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and sharp comments on what
Pierre told them.

"One used to have to be a German--now one must dance with Tatawinova
and Madame Kwudener, and wead Ecka'tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they
should let that fine fellow Bonaparte lose--he'd knock all this nonsense
out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment to a
fellow like that Schwa'tz!" he cried.

Nicholas, though free from Denisov's readiness to find fault with
everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a very
serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been appointed
Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that the Emperor
had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, see