About this story
You stand at Borodino, watch Moscow burn, and are arrested as an arsonist: a commission, a firing squad's wall, then a barracks winter where Platon Karataev mends a coat and remakes you. Freed by partisans, you marry Natasha, and the winter of 1820 fills with children and accounts. One hundred and fifty chapters carry you from a Petersburg salon to Nikolenka's dream.
Who you’ll meet
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, the bored young adjutant already leaving the party he is still in, watched across the candles by Helene Kuragina and by the hostess Anna Pavlovna, who arranged every chair in the room.
How it opens
Anna Pavlovna's drawing room glittered with candles and disciplined conversation.
Every chair seemed assigned to a title before any guest occupied it.
Anna PavlovnaPierre, enter quietly and surrender every dangerous opinion at the door.
Prince VasiliThe young man has returned from Europe full of expensive conclusions.
Europe charged nothing; Petersburg may send the account.
Choose
I shall listen until someone says something impossible.
A salon without disagreement is only decorated furniture.