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Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and

noticed that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the

servants, all followed him in, as if there were now no further

need for permission to enter that room.

CHAPTER XXIII

Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch,

its walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room

behind the columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead

on one side and on the other an immense case containing icons,

was brightly illuminated with red light like a Russian church

during evening service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long

invalid chair, and in that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows,

evidently freshly changed, Pierre saw-covered to the waist by a

bright green quilt-the familiar, majestic figure of his father,

Count Bezukhov, with that gray mane of hair above his broad

forehead which reminded one of a lion, and the deep

characteristically noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. He

lay just under the icons; his large thick hands outside the

quilt.