WHEN PIERRE AND HIS WIFE came into the drawing-room, the countess happened to be in her customary condition of needing the mental exercise of a game of patience, and therefore, although from habit she uttered the words, she always repeated on the return of Pierre or her son after absence: “It was high time, high time, my dear boy; we have been expecting you a long while. Well, thank God, you are here.” And on the presents being given her, pronounced another stock phrase: “It's not the gift that is precious, my dear.… Thank you for thinking of an old woman like me. …” It was evident that Pierre's entrance at that moment was unwelcome, because it interrupted her in dealing her cards. She finished her game of patience, and only then gave her attention to the presents. The presents for her consisted of a card-case of fine workmanship, a bright blue Sèvres cup with a lid and a picture of shepherdesses on it, and a gold snuff-box with the count's portrait on it, which Pierre had had executed by a miniature-painter in Petersburg. The countess had long wished to have this; but just now she had no inclination to weep, and so she looked unconcernedly at the portrait, and took more notice of the card-case.

“Thank you, my dear, you are a comfort to me,” she said, as she always did. “But best of all, you have brought yourself back. It has been beyond everything; you must really scold your wife. She is like one possessed without you. She sees nothing, thinks of nothing,” she said as usual. “Look, Anna Timofyevna,” she added, “what a card-case my son has brought us.”

Madame Byelov admired the present, and was enchanted with the dress material.

Pierre, Natasha, Nikolay, Countess Marya, and Denisov had a great deal they wanted to talk about, which was not talked of before the old countess; not because anything was concealed from her, but simply because she had dropped so out of things, that if they had begun to talk freely before her they would have had to answer so many questions put by her at random, and to repeat so many things that had been repeated to her so many times already; to tell her that this person was dead and that person was married, which she could never remember. Yet they sat as usual at tea in the drawing-room, and Pierre answered the countess's quite superfluous questions, which were of no interest even to her, and told her that Prince Vassily was looking older, and that Countess Marya Alexeyevna sent her kind regards and remembrances, etc.

Such conversation, of no interest to any one, but inevitable, was kept up all tea-time. All the grown-up members of the family were gathered about the round tea-table with the samovar, at which Sonya presided. The children with their tutors and governesses had already had tea, and their voices could be heard in the next room. At tea every one sat in his own habitual place. Nikolay sat by the stove at a little table apart, where his tea was handed him. An old terrier bitch, with a perfectly grey face, Milka, the daughter of the first Milka, lay on a chair beside him. Denisov, with streaks of grey in his curly hair, moustaches, and whiskers, wearing his general's coat unbuttoned, sat beside Countess Marya. Pierre was sitting between his wife and the old countess. He was telling what he knew might interest the old lady and be intelligible to her. He talked of external social events and of the persons who had once made up the circle of the old countess's contemporaries, and had once been a real living circle of people, but were now for the most part scattered about the world, and, like her, living out their remnant of life, gleaning up the stray ears of what they had sown in life. But they, these contemporaries, seemed to the old countess to make up the only real world that was wort............