The Art of Social Theater — War and Peace

Anna Pavlovna's drawing room fills with the highest Petersburg society: people who differ in age and character but share one circle. To each arrival she says they have not yet seen her aunt, and she conducts them to a little old lady in large ribbon bows who repeats the same words about their health, her own, and Her Majesty, who thank God is better today. Not one guest knows the aunt or wants to; each leaves with relief at a vexatious duty done and does not return. Helene arrives in ball dress and her maid of honour badge to collect Prince Vasili for the ambassador's entertainment. Hippolyte brings Mortemart. The Abbe Morio follows. Princess Lise Bolkonskaya, pregnant and known as the most fascinating woman in Petersburg, brings work in a gold-embroidered bag, sits by the silver samovar, and asks what this wretched war is for, since her husband is deserting her to get himself killed. Everyone brightens. Vasili tells Anna what a delightful woman the little princess is.

Then Pierre Bezukhov walks in, stout, spectacled, in a high ruffle and brown coat: the illegitimate son of dying Count Bezukhov, just back from abroad and not yet in service. This is his first appearance in society. Anna greets him with the nod she keeps for the lowest hierarchy, then shows visible alarm, as if something too large had entered the machine. She leads him to the aunt as a poor invalid's visitor. He murmurs, bows to Lise as to an intimate, and abandons the aunt mid-sentence about the Empress's health. Anna detains him with the Abbe Morio and the scheme for perpetual peace; Pierre calls it interesting but hardly feasible, then traps the Italian in argument while the hostess tries to escape.

Anna gets rid of him and resumes her mill-foreman circuit, restarting silent groups and quieting noisy ones. She still watches Pierre as he drifts from Mortemart to the abbe, expecting profound talk from every self-confident face. He stands waiting to speak, a child in a toyshop who does not know which way to look. The salon keeps humming. Belonging here is choreography; Pierre has not learned the steps.