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In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was

exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the

footmen-one behind each chair-stood waiting for the prince to

enter. The head butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting

of the table, making signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing

from the clock to the door by which the prince was to enter.

Prince Andrew was looking at a large gilt frame, new to him,

containing the genealogical tree of the Princes Bolkonski,

opposite which hung another such frame with a badly painted

portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the

estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown-an alleged descendant of

Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew, looking

again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a

man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the

original as to be amusing.

"How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who

had come up to him.