The Art of Social Performance — War and Peace

The reception hums like spindles. Except for the aunt and one elderly lady who looks out of place, the company settles into three groups: men around the abbe, youth around Helene and Princess Lise, and gossip around Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna. Anna serves the vicomte like a chef plating meat guests would reject in the kitchen: she whispers that he knew the Duc d'Enghien, that he is a wonderful raconteur, that he belongs to the best society. She calls Helene over. Helene rises with the same unchanging smile, rustles through the men without looking at any of them, and sits opposite the vicomte, watching her own arm and diamond necklace, copying Anna's expression whenever the story lands. Lise fetches her workbag. Hippolyte, ugly in the same features that make his sister beautiful, asks if it is a ghost story, then sits beside Lise in stockings he calls the colour of a frightened nymph's thigh.

The vicomte tells the neat anecdote: the Duc went secretly to Mademoiselle George, found Bonaparte there, and spared him in a fainting fit; Bonaparte later repaid magnanimity with death. The ladies look agitated. Anna and Lise both say charming. Then Anna spots Pierre talking too loudly with the abbe about the balance of power. The Italian is explaining that only a powerful nation like Russia, placing itself at the head of a disinterested alliance, could save the world. Pierre asks how one gets that balance.

Anna swoops in, asks how the Italian stands the Russian climate, and his face goes sugary: he is so enchanted by the wit of feminine society that he has not yet thought of the weather. She herds both men into the larger circle so she can watch them. Entertainment resumes. Passion is quarantined. The salon is saved from substance, for now.