Prince Vasili had procured for him,
and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so numerous
that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of bewilderment, bustle,
and continual expectation of some good, always in front of him but never
attained.

Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in Petersburg.
The Guards had gone to the front; Dolokhov had been reduced to the
ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the provinces; Prince Andrew
was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity to spend his nights as he
used to like to spend them, or to open his mind by intimate talks with
a friend older than himself and whom he respected. His whole time was
taken up with dinners and balls and was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili's
house in the company of the stout princess, his wife, and his beautiful
daughter Helene.

Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of
attitude toward him that had taken place in society.

Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that what
he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that remarks
which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind became foolish
as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary Hippolyte's stupidest
remarks came out clever and apt. Now everything Pierre said was
charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say so, he could see that she
wished to and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.

In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna
Pavlovna's usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added: "You
will find the beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful to
see."

When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some
link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and
Helene, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation were
being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased him as an
entertaining supposition.

Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" was like the former one, only the novelty she
offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a diplomatist fresh
from Berlin with the very latest details of the Emperor Alexander's
visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august friends had pledged
themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold the cause of justice
against the enemy of the human race. Anna Pavlovna received Pierre with
a shade of melancholy, evidently relating to the young man's