vantly and sympathetically at the father and
son.

"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said he.
"Laughing at us old fellows!"

"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their
business!"

"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his son
by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and pair
at once, and go to Bezukhov's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has sent you
to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get them from
anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in and ask the
princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay--the coachman Ipatka
knows--and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who danced at Count
Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and bring him along to
me."

"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked Nicholas,
laughing. "Dear, dear!..."

At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike,
preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face, Anna
Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon the count in his
dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused and begged her to
excuse his costume.

"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her eyes.
"But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now we shall
get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in any case.
He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is now on the
staff."

The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself one of
his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.

"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with him?"
he asked.

Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was depicted
on her face.

"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what we hear
is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing when we
were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul as young
Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to give him what
consolation I can."

"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov.

Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.

"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper, "has
compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited him to
his house in Petersburg, and now.