knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the count,"
yet ashamed to call him "father."

"He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my friend..."

Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke"
suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili
in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of
illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went
through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his
whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him, and
the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the door.
Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about, and at
last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but resolute
in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly on the arm
said:

"The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be administered.
Come."

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. Into the
right hand, which was lying palm downwards, a wax taper had been thrust
between forefinger and thumb, and an old servant, bending over from
behind the chair, held it in position. By the chair stood the priests,
their long hair falling over their magnificent glittering vestments,
with lighted tapers in their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the
service. A little behind them stood the two younger princesse