Pierre's Comfortable Cage — War and Peace

After Prince Andrew's engagement to Natásha and the almost simultaneous news of Joseph Alexéevich's death, Pierre finds it impossible to go on as before. The zest of perfecting his inner man vanishes. Only a skeleton remains: his house, a brilliant wife who now enjoys the favours of a very important personage, Petersburg acquaintance, and dull court service. He ceases his diary, avoids the Brothers, returns to the club, drinks, and lives so that Countess Hélène speaks severely. To avoid compromising her he goes to Moscow.

There the huge house with its fading princesses, the Iberian shrine, untouched Kremlin snow, and the English Club feel like an old dressing gown, warm and dirty. Society receives him as the merriest, most magnanimous of cranks, a heedless nobleman of the old Russian type whose purse is always empty because it is open. Benefit performances, poor pictures, gypsy choirs, schools, Freemasons, and books meet no refusal; two friends who have borrowed large sums keep him from giving everything away. After two bottles of Margaux his smile reconciles quarrels. Young ladies like him because, without making love, he is amiable to all, especially after supper.

Seven years earlier he would have been horrified to be told that his rut was already shaped: he had longed to found a republic, to be Napoleon, a philosopher, a strategist, to regenerate mankind and free his serfs. Instead he is the wealthy husband of an unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting who unbuttons his waistcoat and abuses the government. In pride he tells himself he is still discontented and different; in humility he pities the comrades he once despised. The old questions, what for and why, still rise several times a day. He sees Hélène worshipped though stupid, Masons intriguing over a Scotch carpet while a deserter is knouted and a priest gives him a cross to kiss. Doctors warn that wine is dangerous with his corpulence; he drinks anyway, telling himself he will unravel the skein later. Later never comes. In the morning the questions are terrible again, and he is glad if anyone calls.