Prince Andrei stayed in Brunna with his acquaintance, Russian diplomat Bilibin.
- And, dear prince, there is no nicer guest, - said Bilibin, coming towards prince Andrey. - Franz, to my bedroom the Prince's belongings! - he turned to the servant who was seeing Bolkonsky off. - What, a messenger of victory? Beautiful. And I am sitting sick, as you can see.
Prince Andrei, having washed and dressed, went out to the luxurious diplomat's office and sat down for a prepared dinner. Bilibin died sitting by the fireplace.
Prince Andrei not only after his journey, but also after the entire campaign, during which he was deprived of all the amenities of purity and elegance of life, felt a pleasant sense of relaxation among the luxurious living conditions to which he was accustomed since childhood. In addition, after the Austrian reception he was pleased to talk at least not in Russian (they spoke French), but with a Russian man who, he assumed, shared a general Russian disgust (now especially vividly felt) with the Austrians.
Bilibin was a man of thirty-five years old, single, one society with Prince Andrei. They knew each other back in St. Petersburg, but got to know each other even better during the last visit of Prince Andrew to Vienna together with Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrei was a young man who promised to go far in the military field, so, and even more so, promised Bilibin in the diplomatic field. He was still a young man, but already a young diplomat, as he began to serve at the age of sixteen, was in Paris, in Copenhagen and now in Vienna occupied a significant place. Both the chancellor and our ambassador in Vienna knew him and cherished him. He was not one of the many diplomats who had to have only negative merits, not to do known things and to speak French in order to be very good diplomats; he was one of those diplomats who loved and knew how to work, and despite his laziness, he sometimes spent the nights at the desk. He worked equally well, whatever the essence of the job was. He was not interested in the "why?" question, but the "how? He didn't care about what was going on in the diplomatic business, but it was a pleasure to write a circular, a memorandum or a report in a clever, accurate and elegant way. Bilibin's merits were appreciated, apart from his written works, also for his art of addressing and speaking in higher spheres.
Bilibin loved to talk as much as he loved his work, only when the conversation could be elegantly witty. In society, he was always waiting for an opportunity to say something wonderful and entered into a conversation no other than under these conditions. Bilibin's conversation was constantly interspersed with original, witty, finished phrases of common interest. These phrases were made in Bilibin's internal laboratory, as if on purpose, of a portable nature, so that insignificant secular people could conveniently remember them and transfer them from the living room to the living room. Indeed, les mots de Bilibine se colportaient dans les salons de Vienne 1, as they say, often had an impact on so-called important matters.
His skinny, exhausted, yellowish face was all covered with large wrinkles, which always seemed as clean and diligently washed as his fingertips after a bath. The movements of these wrinkles were the main game of his face. His forehead wrinkled with wide folds, his eyebrows rose upwards, his eyebrows came downwards, and his cheeks formed large wrinkles. Deep down, small eyes always looked straight and fun.
- Well, now tell us what you did," he said.
Bolkonsky told us the case and the military minister's reception in the most modest way, without mentioning himself.
- Ils m'ont reçu avec ma nouvelle, comme un chien dans un jeu de quilles 2," he concluded.
Bilibin grinned and unraveled the skin folds.
- Cependant, mon cher," he said, looking at his nail from afar and picking up the skin above his left eye, "malgré la haute estime que je professe pour le 'the Orthodox Russian army', j'avoue que votre victoire n'est pas des plus victorieuses 3.
He continued to do so in French, pronouncing in Russian only the words he despised.