Prince Vasily fulfilled the promise made at the evening with Anna Pavlovna to Princess Drubetskaya, who asked him for her only son Boris. He was reported to the Emperor, and, not by way of example to others, he was transferred to the Semenovsky Guards Regiment by a warrant officer. But Boris was not appointed an adjutant or a member of the Kutuzov Regiment, despite all the troubles and intrigues of Anna Mikhailovna. Shortly after the evening of Anna Pavlovna, Anna Mikhailovna returned to Moscow, directly to her rich relatives Rostov, who had had her standing in Moscow and who had brought up and lived with her beloved Borenka for years, who had just been produced in the army and immediately transferred to the Guards Warrant Officers. The Guards had already left St. Petersburg on August 10, and the son, who had stayed in Moscow for uniforms, was to catch up with her on the way to Radzivilov.
The Rostovs had a birthday girl, Natalia, a mother and a younger daughter. In the morning they kept coming up and driving away the zugs, which brought greetings to the big, well-known house of Countess Rostovaya in Povarskaya. The Countess with her beautiful older daughter and guests, who never stopped replacing each other, sat in the living room.
The Countess was a woman with an oriental type of skinny face, forty five years old, apparently exhausted by children, of whom she had twelve people. The sluggishness of her movements and words, which came from a weakness of strength, gave her a significant appearance that inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya, as a domestic person, sat at once, helping to receive and engage in conversation guests. The youth were in the back rooms, not finding it necessary to participate in the reception of visits. The Count met and accompanied the guests, inviting everyone to lunch.
- Very, very grateful to you, ma chère or mon cher 1 (ma chère or mon cher he spoke to everyone without exception, without the slightest shade, both above and below his standing people), for himself and for dear birthday girls. See, come and have lunch. You will offend me, mon cher. I cordially ask you from the whole family, ma chère. - These words with the same expression on a full, cheerful and cleanly shaved face and with the same firm handshake and repeated short bows, he spoke to all without exception and change. After spending one guest, the Count returned to one or the other in the living room; Having moved the armchairs and with a look of the person loving and able to live, well arranged feet and having put on knees hands, it considerably swayed, offered guesses about weather, consulted about health, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in very bad, but self-confident French, and again with a kind tired, but firm in performance of the duty of the person went to see off, setting off rare gray hair on a bald spot, and again called for dinner. Sometimes, coming back from the front, he would go through the flower room and the waitress's room to the big marble hall, where they would set the table for eighty couverts, and, looking at the waiters who wore silver and porcelain, spread the tables and unfolded the camouflage tablecloths, he would call on Dmitry Vasilyevich, a nobleman who was doing all his business, and would say:
- Well, well, Mitenka, make sure that everything was okay. Well, well, well," he said, gladly looking at the huge extended table. - The main thing is the serving. So... - And he was leaving, sighing smugly, back in the living room.
- Maria Lvovna Karagina with her daughter! - The bass was reported by a huge decanter, a travelling footman, entering the living room door. The Countess thought and smelled of a golden snuffbox with a portrait of her husband.
- I was tormented by these visits," she said. - Well, I'll take her in for the last time. Choporna is very much. Ask," she said to the footman in a sad voice, as if she were speaking: "Well, finish it off.
A tall, full and proud lady with a smiling daughter, smiling in her dresses, entered the living room.
- Chère comtesse, il y a si longtemps... elle a été alitée, la pauvre enfant... au bal des Razoumovsky... et la comtesse Apraksine... j'ai été si heureuse... The conversation began, which is going to be so much as to get up at the first pause, to make a noise in dresses, to say: "Je suis bien charmée; la santé de maman... et la comtesse Apraksine" 3, - and again, with the noise of the dresses, go to the front, put on a fur coat or coat and leave. The conversation was about the main city news of that time - about the illness of the famous rich and handsome old Catherine time Count Bezukhov and about his illegal son Pierre, who behaved so indecently at the evening at Anna Pavlovna Scherer