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At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy

arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English

Club.

The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown,

giving orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the

club's head cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries,

veal, and fish for this dinner. The count had been a member and

on the committee of the club from the day it was founded. To him

the club entrusted the arrangement of the festival in honor of

Bagration, for few men knew so well how to arrange a feast on an

open-handed, hospitable scale, and still fewer men would be so

well able and willing to make up out of their own resources what

might be needed for the success of the fete. The club cook and

the steward listened to the count's orders with pleased faces,

for they knew that under no other management could they so easily

extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing

several thousand rubles.