Pagina 56 de 3800

CHAPTER VI

Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests

began to take their leave.

Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with

huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a

drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say

something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this

he was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of

his own, the general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling

at the plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his

absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in

it was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest

expression. Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian

mildness that expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded

and said: "I hope to see you again, but I also hope you will

change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre."