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"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my

children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear.

That is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a

gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"

she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and

though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a

little person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a

relation of yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory

and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a

movement of the head that he was considering this information.