, merry smile. "What am I? An illegitimate son!" He suddenly
blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a great effort to say
this. "Without a name and without means... And it really..." But he
did not say what "it really" was. "For the present I am free and am
all right. Only I haven't the least idea what I am to do; I wanted to
consult you seriously."

Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance--friendly and
affectionate as it was--expressed a sense of his own superiority.

"I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among our
whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you will; it's all the
same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up visiting
those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so badly--all
this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!"

"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging his
shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!"

"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme il
faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women, 'women
and wine' I don't understand!"

Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing the dissipated
life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to reform by
marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister.

"Do you know?" said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy thought,
"seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading such a life I
can't decide or think properly about anything. One's head aches, and one
spends all one's money. He asked me for tonight, but I won't go."

"You give me your word of honor not to go?"

"On my honor!"

CHAPTER IX

It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a cloudless,
northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending to drive
straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more he felt the
impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was light enough to
see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed more like morning
or evening than night. On the way Pierre remembered that Anatole Kuragin
was expecting the usual set for cards that evening, after which there
was generally a drinking bout, finishing with visits of a kind Pierre
was very fond of.

"I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he.

But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go
there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so
passionately on