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"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,

listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that

Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready

to burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a

stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her

forty years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be

an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even

when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order

not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The

subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features,

always played round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a

continual consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither

wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna

burst out: