in
silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the
morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of
Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would herself
wish to die, that his end was not only touching but edifying. As to the
last meeting between father and son, it was so touching that she could
not think of it without tears, and did not know which had behaved better
during those awful moments--the father who so remembered everything
and everybody at last and had spoken such pathetic words to the son, or
Pierre, whom it had been pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief,
though he tried hard to hide it in order not to sadden his dying father.
"It is painful, but it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such
men as the old count and his worthy son," said she. Of the behavior of
the eldest princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in
whispers and as a great secret.

CHAPTER XXV

At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the
arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but
this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the
old prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich
(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor
Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from Moscow to
Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to
say that there are only two sources of human vice--idleness and
superstition, and only two virtues--activity and intelligence. He
himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these two
cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry
till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was
occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving
problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working
in the garden, or superintending the building that was always going on
at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition facilitating activity,
regularity in his household was carrie