into the room with his coffee, Pierre
was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.

He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled expression,
unable to realize where he was.

"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at home,"
said the valet.

But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the countess
herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with silver and with
simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round her lovely head like
a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic, except that there was
a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent marble brow. With her
imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in front of the valet.
She knew of the duel and had come to speak about it. She waited till the
valet had set down the coffee things and left the room. Pierre looked
at her timidly over his spectacles, and like a hare surrounded by hounds
who lays back her ears and continues to crouch motionless before her
enemies, he tried to continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless
and impossible, he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down
but looked at him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to
go.

"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should like to
know?" she asked sternly.

"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.

"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel about? What
is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."

Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth, but
could not reply.

"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe
everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that Dolokhov
was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness of speech,
uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and you believed
it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel prove? That you're
a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew that. What will be the
result? That I shall be the laughingstock of all Moscow, that everyone
will say that you, drunk and not knowing what you were about, challenged
a man you are jealous of without cause." Helene raised her voice and
became more and more excited, "A man who's a better man than you in
every way..."

"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her, and not
moving a muscle.

"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like his
company? If you